Grave Robbery Virtually Universal Muzychenko

Jewish Ludmir: The History and Tragedy of the Jewish Community of Volodymyr-Volynsky: A Regional History, by Volodymyr Muzychenko. 2015

Post-Nazi Cemetery Repurposing, Looting of Sites of Jewish Dead, Occurred Not Only in Poland

Author Volodymyr Muzychenko is head of the Jewish community of Ludmir. This book has been translated into English from Ukrainian, and the translation is often awkward. It combines history, photography, and biographical narratives in a somewhat unfocused manner. A more organized and comprehensive work on this subject, is (and see my review of) The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews: 1941-1944, also which, unlike Muzychenko’s book, is candid about the OUN-UPA genocide of several tens of thousands of Poles of Volhynia.

I examine a few subjects in detail.

NOT ONLY THE BUNDIST SCHOOLS: THE ZIONIST TARBUT SCHOOLS ALSO PROMOTED AGGRESSIVE JEWISH SEPARATISM AND JEWISH DISLOYALTY TO POLAND

Attention is now focused on the interwar period (1918-1939), when Wolyn was part of the Kresy (eastern Poland). Although the Yiddishist (Bundist) schools (Tsysho; Cysho) are the ones famous (or notorious) for promoting an aggressive form of Jewish particularism and separatism (which enshrined Jews as the “other”), it turns out that the Zionist Tarbut schools did also. Author Volodymyr Muzychenko makes this clear, as he writes, “Beginning in 1922. The main Tarbut [Hebrew: “Culture”] center became Poland, where, thanks to the Zionist movement, this organization played a significant role in Jewish cultural life between the two world wars…All disciplines, with the exception of the state language, were taught in Hebrew; a revival of the Yiddish language also took place…ERETZ-YISRAEL [the Land of Israel] and the question of the national revival of the Jewish people in its historic Fatherland were the building blocks of the Tarbut’s curriculum.” (p. 85).

JEWISH ECONOMIC HEGEMONY

On another subject related to the Jews of Ludmir in the interwar period, Muzychenko points out that, “In 1926, eighty-four percent of the businesses in the city were owned by Jews.” (p. 101).

COLLABORATION WITH THE NAZIS: NO DOUBLE STANDARD GOVERNING JEWS AND GOYIM

Nowadays, the issue of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis is often summarily dismissed by the slogan that “All Jews were victims of the Nazis”. Author Muzychenko, on the other hand, holds Nazi collaborators of ALL backgrounds morally responsible for their conduct. He comments, “It is impossible to excuse those Ukrainians and Poles who, in collaborating with the Nazis, helped commit these insane acts, and also those who served in the Jewish police in the ghetto and the members of the Judenrat, who consciously set out on the path of collaboration.” (pp. 121-122).

CONSEQUENCES OF THE NAZI GERMAN-MADE HOLOCAUST

The Germans murdered most of the Jews of Ludmir through mass shootings (as by the EINSATZGRUPPEN: the Holocaust by Bullets), followed by burial in mass graves. Before WWII, some 22,000 Jews had lived in Volodymyr-Volynski, and only 80-140 of them survived the Shoah. (p. 267). (This does not include those Jews from this town that had earlier fled to the interior of the USSR). Of the 1.5 million Jews who were murdered in Ukraine, 102,500 of them were killed in the Volyn (Wolyn) region. (p. 271).

This work is not entirely Judeocentric. The author brings up GENERALPLAN OST, which was supposed to bring in millions of German settlers that would replace the over 30 million Slavs that the Germans planned to starve to death. (p. xxxiii). This was part of the Polokaust.

NOT ONLY THE POLES: THE SOVIETS ALSO ENGAGED IN THE POSTWAR REPURPOSING OF JEWISH CEMETERIES

During the Nazi German occupation, the Germans took the MATSEVOT (gravestones), and used them for the paving of streets. (pp. 72-73). After the re-occupation and re-annexation of the Kresy in 1944, the Soviets continued the policies of repurposing of post-Jewish property, including the removal of MATSEVOT from the cemeteries, and re-use for other purposes. (p. 72, 196). [This reminds us that the neglect and repurposing of sacral post-Jewish objects, in post-WWII Poland, was a common feature of Communist rule throughout the Soviet bloc, and was not something peculiar to Poland.]

In recent years, as publicity developed about the mass graves near Ludmir containing the remains of Jews, ransacking of graves took place by those locals searching for valuables. (p. 286). [This reminds us that grave robbery, emphasized by neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross in his GOLDEN HARVEST with especial reference to the site of Treblinka, was and is a common phenomenon, moreover not limited to times of desperate want, and is not just something done by Poles.]