Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

HOLODOMOR Jewish Complicity Magocsi


Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence, by Paul Robert Magocsi, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern. 2016

Lazar Kaganowicz Drove the HOLODOMOR. Babyn Yar. Mendel Beilis. Ruthenians vs Ukrainians

This picture-filled book can serve as an excellent introduction for the beginning reader interested in the shared Jewish-Ukrainian experience. It features history, culture, religion, and much more. A significant shortcoming of this book is its superficial treatment of controversial matters involving Jews and Ukrainians, as elaborated towards the end of my review.

I first focus on a few topics of particular interest:

RUTHENIANS IN EASTERN GALICIA (CIRCA 1900) WERE NOT THEN SYNONYMOUS WITH UKRAINIANS

With reference to immigrants, to Canada, in 1880s-1914, Magocsi and Petrovsky-Shtern comment, “In a sense, Ukrainians were ‘made in America’ and Canada. This is because when the immigrants first arrived from western Ukrainian lands, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they called themselves Rusyns, or in English, Ruthenians, with little or no sense of being Ukrainian. They had to learn this from some of their more nationally conscious secular and religious leaders through participation in secular and religious community functions.” (p. 234). The authors reproduce a cartoon in which arriving Ruthenians, when asked their nationality, stutter…Austrian…Russian…, I mean P- P–Polish. (p. 234).

The foregoing has unstated implications for Polish-Ukrainian relations. Since the Ruthenians, at the time, did not generally consider themselves Ukrainians, or even have a well-crystallized sense of nationality at all, Poles saw nothing wrong in wanting eastern Galicia, with its Ruthenian majority and large Polish and Jewish minority, to become a part of Poland. In addition, and not surprisingly, Poles reasonably thought that the Ruthenians could be Polonized, if not culturally and linguistically, then certainly politically [as GENTE RUTHENUS, NATIONE POLONUS]. The latter could be analogous to Switzerland’s Germans. Despite holding on to their language and customs, they consider themselves Swiss citizens, and do not particularly identify with either Austria’s Germans or Germany’s Germans.

THE MENDEL BEILIS BLOOD-LIBEL TRIAL (1913)

The authors write, “…the jury, selected mostly from local Ukrainian peasants, found Beilis innocent but nevertheless upheld the view that the killing was an act of ritual murder.” (p. 42). People often forget the latter.

LAZAR KAGANOVICH, HIS JEWISHNESS, AND THE GREAT FAMINE (HOLODOMOR)(1932-on).

Authors Magocsi and Petrovsky-Shtern identify the cause of the HOLODOMOR as follows, “It was Kaganovich who was instrumental in bringing about the cultural revival connected with Ukrainization that was initiated 1924-1925 (people often forget this episode), yet it was the same Kaganovich who in 1932, together with other top-ranking Kremlin leaders, fostered the man-made famine in the Ukraine.” (pp. 288-289).

The authors then fall back into the standard exculpations for the Zydokomuma. They say that there was nothing more Jewish in Kaganovich and the HOLODOMOR than in Kaganovich and the construction of the Moscow subway system. This is an exceedingly (in fact, ridiculously) simplistic, exculpatory construct. To begin with, the construction of a subway system is not a matter of historical and moral gravity: Implementing a policy to starve millions of people certainly is. The “Kaganowicz wasn’t doing anything specifically Jewish” is every bit as flippant as saying that there was nothing “Polish” or “Ukrainian” about Polish or Ukrainian Nazi collaborators.

In addition to all this, we are dealing with two sets of the standard double standards. For one, Jews like to take credit, in a collective sense, for the many Jewish Nobel Prize winners, but are unwilling to accept liability, in a collective sense, for the crimes of leading Jewish Communists. Secondly, Jews constantly call on Poles and Ukrainians to accept collective liability for the acts of a few Poles and a few Ukrainians–to “face up to dark chapters in their history”, to “come to terms with the past”, and engage in “moral reckoning” [standard Holocaustpeak]–all the while exempting themselves from the same standard, as in the case of mass-murderer Lazar Kaganovich.

BABYN YAR (BABI YAR)(1941-on): CONFLATING OPINIONS AND FACTS

The authors, using two columns, contrast the various stereotyped opinions Jews have of Ukrainians with the various stereotyped opinions that Ukrainians have of Jews. (p. 3). So far, so good. However, Magocsi and Petrovsky-Shtern list, as a Ukrainian opinion, the statement that “Not only Jews were killed in Babyn Yar.” (p. 3). This is not an opinion: This is a FACT. Furthermore, it is a fact that most of the victims shot by the Germans at Babyn Yar were local Slavs, and not Jews.

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