In the Interest of Fairness.
A response to Mr. Dershowitz’s recent opinion piece in Newsweek.
https://www.newsweek.com/zelenskys-lies-cant-hide-ukraines-bloody-role-holocaust-opinion-1747875?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spot_im_redirect_source=pitc
Mr. Dershowitz’s words both astounded and saddened me, starting with its inflammatory title, “Zelensky's Lies Can’t Hide Ukraine’s Bloody Role in the Holocaust.”
As a highly respected lawyer, Dershowitz is bound to understand that any accusation must be corroborated by weighty evidence; otherwise, it is blatant defamation and racism.
I, a Jew, am offended by the very term “Holocaust”. Would it not be more sensible for us Jewish patriots to use the Hebrew word “Shoah” (Catastrophe) or “genocide of the Jewish people"?
The horrors that the Jewish people faced was best characterized by the person who coined the term “genocide”, lawyer Raphael Lemkin (May his memory forever be a blessing!), a most honorable man.
The courage and passion with which Mr. Dershowitz defends the State of Israel from insinuations and myths (those primarily created by the KGB-USSR), is tremendous, and is why I am perplexed at how the same man so liberally repeats the same well-worn, brainwashed narrative of Soviet-fabricated accusations against the Ukrainian people.
He writes: “Many of those who pulled the trigger were themselves Ukrainian, recruited into the mobile killing squads by the Nazis.” This was written by Dershowitz in relation to Babyn Yar, the ravine in Kyiv where the Nazis had executed and brutally destroyed the lives of thousands of Jews, Ukrainians, and other nationalities in 1941 through 1943.
The Ukrainian-Jewish historian Vitaliy Nakhmanovych has clearly proved in his writings, over and over again, that Jews killed at Babyn Yar were executed exclusively by members of Sonderkommando groups, aka ‘the real Aryans', rather than by collaborators who were comprised of various ethnicities, including, of course, Ukrainian, recruited by the Nazis from the ranks of Soviet POWs.
Dershowitz brings in a monstrous generalization as he states, “Almost without exception, Ukrainians either participated in the mass murder of Jews or said nothing as their Jewish neighbours were rounded up and slaughtered”, a line loaded with absurd national hatred.
When Dershowitz writes that “The complicity of Ukrainians in the mass murders was greater than in most other countries,” this means that he supposedly possesses documented evidence that among the participants in the killings of Jews during the Shoah, there were more ethnic Ukrainians than any other ethnicity, including the Germans? If this is so, I would like to see this proof. As of January 2021, Yad Vashem awarded the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” to 2,673 Ukrainians, who rank fourth, at the very least, in the list of awardees. I say at the very least, because according to research done by the Ukrainian-Jewish historian Ihor Shchupak, a number of Poles who were granted this very title were in fact ethnic Ukrainians, but were citizens of the Polish Republic and thus recognized as Poles.
I will remind you that it was not one, not two, but many thousands of Ukrainian and Polish individuals and families that risked being shot on the spot for hiding and protecting Jews.
After accusing Ukrainians of being the most active participants in the Shoah, Mr. Dershowitz brings up the seventeenth-century Ukrainian military commander and Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host Вohdan Khmelnytsky, noting that “The statue of this genocidal murderer still stands in the center of Kyiv.” Has Dershowitz ever asked who erected this monument in the center of Ukraine’s capital-and why?
Did he, perhaps, ever wonder why, during the Shoah in 1943, the Soviet government established an order in honour of this “genocidal murderer”? And why did the Soviet authorities, in 1954, rename the Ukrainian city of Proskuriv as Khmelnytsky? And why does a KGB service brochure dated 1955 sing the praises of this same “genocidal murderer”? A brochure that says: “Three hundred years ago, at the Pereiaslav Council, the reunification of Ukraine and Russia was proclaimed through a powerful expression of will.” Is Dershowitz aware that during the pogroms, besides Jews, Khmelnytsky’s troops also killed Poles and Ukrainians who professed holding the 'incorrect' faith of Roman Catholicism?
Khmelnytsky and his era require the most scrupulous research, but the above-mentioned facts will lead any historian to reflect more deeply on this question. Personally speaking, as a proudly Jewish man, I am bothered by the Khmelnytsky statue. I am also bothered and believe that the monument of Empress Catherine II of Russia in Odessa (a monument dedicated to the infamous Russian ruler who established the shameful Pale of Settlement) is offensive to all Jews, and I hope that this monument bothers Mr. Dershowitz as much as it does me.
And, yes, Jews fled the pogroms to the US, but why is Mr. Dershowitz silent about the fact that these pogroms were organized by the Russian imperial authorities, and also persecuted the lawyers who were assisting pogrom victims? One of these figures, for example, was Arnold D. Margolin, a Ukrainian diplomat, lawyer, and active participant in Ukrainian and Jewish community and political affairs who became world-famous as the defense counsel for Mendel Beilis in the notorious Jewish blood libel trial that took place in Kyiv from 1911 to 1913.
Arnold D. Margolin.
Speaking about contemporary Ukraine, Mr. Dershowitz writes that Ukrainians “even voted for Zelensky, who is a man of Jewish heritage,” a fact that he mentions only in passing, even though Volodymyr Zelensky garnered a whopping 73% of the vote by a population that is most definitely not a Jewish majority - how very antisemitic.
Three presidents of Ukraine have apologized to the Jewish people for their participation in the Shoah on the behalf of ethnic Ukrainians. How many presidents, say, of Russia or France, have apologized to the Jewish people?
In mentioning the name of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, Jan Karski (May his memory be for a blessing!), Mr. Dershowitz somehow conveniently forgot to mention how the leader of his own country, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, responded to Karski’s pleas to save the Jews of Poland and other European countries. He also failed to say that American Jews did not believe Karski’s accounts of the horrors of the Shoah. Has Mr. Dershowitz, as an American-Jew, apologized to the Jews of Europe for the refusal of the American leaders to allow Jewish refugees into the US?
If he has done this, I applaud him for his courage, if not, I ask on what grounds does he request the same of Zelensky, a Ukrainian-Jew?
I am not certain whether Mr. Dershowitz is familiar with another Polish hero, the Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader Witold Pilecki, who was executed by the Polish communist authorities in 1948? With all due and great respect to the work and sacrifices of Jan Karski, I must dispute Mr. Dershowitz's statement about how Karski: “risked his life to go into death camps and report to the world what he saw,” when in reality it was Pilecki who did so. It was Pilecki, not Karski, who volunteered himself as a prisoner of Auschwitz and transmitted information to the outside world about the horrors that were taking place inside the death camp.
Report dated 1942.
Memorial plate to Witold Pilecki.
People make mistakes and that includes Mr. Dershowitz. My question is about something else. Does Mr. Dershowitz know that there were Jews among the Polish state security officers who subjected Pilecki to gruesome tortures? Is he aware that some Jews opted to serve the Soviet communists and that some of them subjected rabbis to medieval tortures in NKVD prisons, and closed down synagogues and Jewish schools? Do the Jewish people bear collective responsibility for this? No, because every nation has its share of scoundrels. Mr. Dershowitz should address his grievances concerning Ukraine’s participation in the Shoah, not to President Zelensky, but to the government of the USSR, because in 1939-1945 there was no independent Ukrainian state. The fact that the Jewish population was left to the mercy of fate is the fault of the USSR and its proclaimed and current heir, Putin’s Russia, where the arch-criminal Stalin is to this day lauded as an “effective manager.”
https://www.newsweek.com/zelenskys-lies-cant-hide-ukraines-bloody-role-holocaust-opinion-1747875?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spot_im_redirect_source=pitc
Mr. Dershowitz’s words both astounded and saddened me, starting with its inflammatory title, “Zelensky's Lies Can’t Hide Ukraine’s Bloody Role in the Holocaust.”
As a highly respected lawyer, Dershowitz is bound to understand that any accusation must be corroborated by weighty evidence; otherwise, it is blatant defamation and racism.
I, a Jew, am offended by the very term “Holocaust”. Would it not be more sensible for us Jewish patriots to use the Hebrew word “Shoah” (Catastrophe) or “genocide of the Jewish people"?
The horrors that the Jewish people faced was best characterized by the person who coined the term “genocide”, lawyer Raphael Lemkin (May his memory forever be a blessing!), a most honorable man.
The courage and passion with which Mr. Dershowitz defends the State of Israel from insinuations and myths (those primarily created by the KGB-USSR), is tremendous, and is why I am perplexed at how the same man so liberally repeats the same well-worn, brainwashed narrative of Soviet-fabricated accusations against the Ukrainian people.
He writes: “Many of those who pulled the trigger were themselves Ukrainian, recruited into the mobile killing squads by the Nazis.” This was written by Dershowitz in relation to Babyn Yar, the ravine in Kyiv where the Nazis had executed and brutally destroyed the lives of thousands of Jews, Ukrainians, and other nationalities in 1941 through 1943.
The Ukrainian-Jewish historian Vitaliy Nakhmanovych has clearly proved in his writings, over and over again, that Jews killed at Babyn Yar were executed exclusively by members of Sonderkommando groups, aka ‘the real Aryans', rather than by collaborators who were comprised of various ethnicities, including, of course, Ukrainian, recruited by the Nazis from the ranks of Soviet POWs.
Dershowitz brings in a monstrous generalization as he states, “Almost without exception, Ukrainians either participated in the mass murder of Jews or said nothing as their Jewish neighbours were rounded up and slaughtered”, a line loaded with absurd national hatred.
When Dershowitz writes that “The complicity of Ukrainians in the mass murders was greater than in most other countries,” this means that he supposedly possesses documented evidence that among the participants in the killings of Jews during the Shoah, there were more ethnic Ukrainians than any other ethnicity, including the Germans? If this is so, I would like to see this proof. As of January 2021, Yad Vashem awarded the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” to 2,673 Ukrainians, who rank fourth, at the very least, in the list of awardees. I say at the very least, because according to research done by the Ukrainian-Jewish historian Ihor Shchupak, a number of Poles who were granted this very title were in fact ethnic Ukrainians, but were citizens of the Polish Republic and thus recognized as Poles.
I will remind you that it was not one, not two, but many thousands of Ukrainian and Polish individuals and families that risked being shot on the spot for hiding and protecting Jews.
After accusing Ukrainians of being the most active participants in the Shoah, Mr. Dershowitz brings up the seventeenth-century Ukrainian military commander and Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host Вohdan Khmelnytsky, noting that “The statue of this genocidal murderer still stands in the center of Kyiv.” Has Dershowitz ever asked who erected this monument in the center of Ukraine’s capital-and why?
Did he, perhaps, ever wonder why, during the Shoah in 1943, the Soviet government established an order in honour of this “genocidal murderer”? And why did the Soviet authorities, in 1954, rename the Ukrainian city of Proskuriv as Khmelnytsky? And why does a KGB service brochure dated 1955 sing the praises of this same “genocidal murderer”? A brochure that says: “Three hundred years ago, at the Pereiaslav Council, the reunification of Ukraine and Russia was proclaimed through a powerful expression of will.” Is Dershowitz aware that during the pogroms, besides Jews, Khmelnytsky’s troops also killed Poles and Ukrainians who professed holding the 'incorrect' faith of Roman Catholicism?
Khmelnytsky and his era require the most scrupulous research, but the above-mentioned facts will lead any historian to reflect more deeply on this question. Personally speaking, as a proudly Jewish man, I am bothered by the Khmelnytsky statue. I am also bothered and believe that the monument of Empress Catherine II of Russia in Odessa (a monument dedicated to the infamous Russian ruler who established the shameful Pale of Settlement) is offensive to all Jews, and I hope that this monument bothers Mr. Dershowitz as much as it does me.
And, yes, Jews fled the pogroms to the US, but why is Mr. Dershowitz silent about the fact that these pogroms were organized by the Russian imperial authorities, and also persecuted the lawyers who were assisting pogrom victims? One of these figures, for example, was Arnold D. Margolin, a Ukrainian diplomat, lawyer, and active participant in Ukrainian and Jewish community and political affairs who became world-famous as the defense counsel for Mendel Beilis in the notorious Jewish blood libel trial that took place in Kyiv from 1911 to 1913.
Arnold D. Margolin.
Speaking about contemporary Ukraine, Mr. Dershowitz writes that Ukrainians “even voted for Zelensky, who is a man of Jewish heritage,” a fact that he mentions only in passing, even though Volodymyr Zelensky garnered a whopping 73% of the vote by a population that is most definitely not a Jewish majority - how very antisemitic.
Three presidents of Ukraine have apologized to the Jewish people for their participation in the Shoah on the behalf of ethnic Ukrainians. How many presidents, say, of Russia or France, have apologized to the Jewish people?
In mentioning the name of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, Jan Karski (May his memory be for a blessing!), Mr. Dershowitz somehow conveniently forgot to mention how the leader of his own country, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, responded to Karski’s pleas to save the Jews of Poland and other European countries. He also failed to say that American Jews did not believe Karski’s accounts of the horrors of the Shoah. Has Mr. Dershowitz, as an American-Jew, apologized to the Jews of Europe for the refusal of the American leaders to allow Jewish refugees into the US?
If he has done this, I applaud him for his courage, if not, I ask on what grounds does he request the same of Zelensky, a Ukrainian-Jew?
I am not certain whether Mr. Dershowitz is familiar with another Polish hero, the Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader Witold Pilecki, who was executed by the Polish communist authorities in 1948? With all due and great respect to the work and sacrifices of Jan Karski, I must dispute Mr. Dershowitz's statement about how Karski: “risked his life to go into death camps and report to the world what he saw,” when in reality it was Pilecki who did so. It was Pilecki, not Karski, who volunteered himself as a prisoner of Auschwitz and transmitted information to the outside world about the horrors that were taking place inside the death camp.
Report dated 1942.
Memorial plate to Witold Pilecki.
People make mistakes and that includes Mr. Dershowitz. My question is about something else. Does Mr. Dershowitz know that there were Jews among the Polish state security officers who subjected Pilecki to gruesome tortures? Is he aware that some Jews opted to serve the Soviet communists and that some of them subjected rabbis to medieval tortures in NKVD prisons, and closed down synagogues and Jewish schools? Do the Jewish people bear collective responsibility for this? No, because every nation has its share of scoundrels. Mr. Dershowitz should address his grievances concerning Ukraine’s participation in the Shoah, not to President Zelensky, but to the government of the USSR, because in 1939-1945 there was no independent Ukrainian state. The fact that the Jewish population was left to the mercy of fate is the fault of the USSR and its proclaimed and current heir, Putin’s Russia, where the arch-criminal Stalin is to this day lauded as an “effective manager.”