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”KIEV—A statue in memory of Symon Petliura was unveiled several months ago in the Jewish neighborhood of Vinnitsa. The monument was initiated and erected by the Ukraine authorities. Petliura, by the way, is linked to the massacre of as many as 100,000 innocent Jews during the 1918-1920 civil war.

And he’s not alone. Meet Ukraine’s new heroes: Anti-Semitic murderers who massacred Jews and are being commemorated as part of a “decommunization” (a process of dismantling the legacies of communism) in the streets and city squares.
Avenues and streets have been named after Stepan Bandera and his partners, who collaborated with the Nazis and massacred Jews during the Holocaust. Ironically, the avenue leading to Moscow and to Babi Yar (the site of massacres carried out by German forces and local Ukrainian collaborators) is named after Bandera.
It’s no wonder Ukraine’s Jews are angry and troubled, living in a country where anti-Semitic murderers are backed by the authorities and spraying hate graffiti is routine. During Catholic Christmas, for example, hate graffiti were sprayed in three Jewish sites—the gates of the Holocaust museum in Odessa, a Jewish cultural center and an inactive synagogue in the city.
As for the anti-Semites’ successful integration into Ukraine’s legitimate mainstream, Dolinsky explains that the nationalists have a lot of influence. “They helped senior officials rise to power, and they owe them quite a bit. The second reason is the impact of the conflict with Russia. Glorifying the anti-Semites is an ideological and practical way of recruiting the population. In other words, in a bid to enlist the public against the aggressor, they have to create an agenda of ‘heroes’ who fought for our country with weapons in their hands. This is also happening under the nationalists’ influence.”
I think the pressure on Ukraine will increase both internationally and internally. The thing is that most of the country’s residents are related to millions of Ukrainians who fought against the Nazis in the Soviet army. These people are very unhappy with policy of glorifying that small group of the OUN-UPA, which was mainly active in western Ukraine and is now becoming the main historical agenda. There is a concern, however, that the damage has already been done and that the youth has been successfully brainwashed.”
Dolinsky pins his hopes on the international pressure. “We can’t announce that we accept the European values, and at the same time declare people who collaborated with the Nazis as heroes, while completely denying those exact same values. Ukraine will have to make a choice: Either to become an enlightened European state or to sink into the mud of historical contradictions and nationalism.”

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,...076191,00.html
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