Clarity: Ukraine, bloody Nazi past and the current innocent

An excellent argument all Jews refusing to live in Europe or American, or frankly in any Christian country. The reality is that in almost all European countries, a considerable number of people went out of their way to help the Nazis, and that doesn’t include Germans who “were following orders”. While the government (or others) executed many collaborators after the war, for the good of peace most Europeans decided on deliberate amnesia.

Many Ukrainians fought for the Allies, and some collaborated with the Germans. There is no hiddush here. And that is true almost everywhere in Europe.

How far back should we be mad? Should we boycott anything to do with Spain (including Latin America) since we’re mad over 1492? Should we have support the majority in view in America in 1939 that the US should not get involved since we were mad at England for the expulsion of Jews? Should we refuse to have anything to do with the United States and Britain since their elected leaders, with full knowledge of the Holocaust (in close to real time, as we now know from the declassified Engima decryptions) did nothing to facilitate Jews escaping from Europe. Should we support the Iranians since they are the ones who facilitated the building of Bayis Sheini?

It is one thing to say that those who forget history get to do it over again. It’s another thing to be so lost in the past that you cease to be able to function in the present.

“Many Ukrainians fought for the Allies, and some collaborated with the Germans. There is no hiddush here. And that is true almost everywhere in Europe.”

But there were also Ukrainians who, during WWII, hid Jews from the Nazis, risking their own lives and the lives of their children. Among them were different people – from Orthodox priests to ordinary peasants. The names of some of them mentioned in Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. And the names of those who were not mentioned in the Garden of the Righteous remained in the memory of saved by them and in the memory of their children.

I’d call out the sophmoric bigotry of the OP, but instead I’ll point out that shallow generalizations are indicative of a life untroubled by experience or meaningful relationships.

OP is right.
I’m sure there were good guys there too. But facts are facts.

‘Ivan the terrible’ in Treblinka, anybody?

Haaretz which is never accused of bashing enemies if the Jewish people..

Ofer Aderet, Haaretz correspondent: “The Ukrainians did not help the Jews in the Holocaust, really, really, really not. They were the so-called ‘Nazis and their aides’. They helped locate, inform and lead the Jews to the killing pits. John Demjanjuk was Ukrainian. They were eager to commit murder of Jews even without an order, in order to express their hatred. ”
Still.
Given all that, we should all help now all Ukrainians of course.

This sad OP is a sign of not teaching subjects like “goyishe history” and ignoring Jewish history also.
If you would really interested in this topic, you would compare & contrast events that you mention with number of Jews and Ukrainians who ended their life killed by NKVD and Russian labor camps. Many frum Jews who survived those times remembered that, but Jewish establishment, being mostly “progressive”, ignored USSR crimes when the beast was alive, and it seems that this general attitude is now popular even among observant Jews whose grandparents did not pass their knowledge to them.

Shalom: You view, treat, would deal with and would sympathize with any troubles experienced by today’s German people the same way you would, say, today’s Canadians?

The year for the Nazis ym’s is 1938-45 or maybe 1933-45.

From a geopolitical perspective, EY and the U.S. need to deal with what is in their strategic interests NOW and forego policy decisions rooted in historical/emotional links. Not always easy to do but when you are dealing with the risks of expanding conflicts with a nuclear power and existential issues, you don’t have the luxury of morality-based decisionmaking tied to prior events.

we have to see this in perspective, yiden lived in Ukraine for centuries and if it would be only bad i believe they would have immigrated else where the fact that they lived there for so long says something, yes there is some terribly cruel history, but proportion to how many yiden lived there and compared to other eastern European countries i am not sure the differences is so great.

Ukrainians and Cossacks have been especially cruel and murderous to Jews throughout many centuries.

again, this is some perversion of discussing sins of Cossacks while Russians are bombing Ukraine.
Maybe discussing sins of Russians would be more appropriate (and numerous). for one, most of Cossack horrors are not from the time they were roaming steppes and attacking wandering Jews, but from the time when they were employed by Czars as a separate police force to keep Jews and everyone else in check, similarly to how now Russians have Chechen units that they are sending to pacify other ethnicities. It does not mean that all Chechen are pro-Russian, as most were fighting against.

The Ukrainian anti-Russian factions have always, and still do today, honor their ant-semitic ancestors who murdered masses of Jews in cold blood, with street namings and national holiday and statues in city centers.

> All people are responsible for the sins and crimes of their ancestors so long as they have not taken any steps towards teshuva.

what is the source of that? I learned that when people continue aveiros of their parents, then they are punished. It is, of course, often a case when a nation continues on the same path as usual, taking previous attitudes for granted. Still, post-Soviet countries went through a lot of changes and they might not have kept same attitudes. I think when we talk about a fully autonomous aggressive nations, like Germany, Russia, then they can’t be treated normally unless they did a formal teshuva, reparations, etc even if this cannot return the lives lost (something Germany did and Russia did a little in the 90s), but it is a different thing when you talk about countries that were subjugated themselves, like Ukraine. If they changed their attitudes, then this should be enough. I am not saying they did, I don’t know enough, although electing a Jewish president with 80% and fighting Russians like they do show something.