A Jew who's lived longer than the Jewish state expresses his thoughts on the complicated relationship between his nation and Ukraine:
"In my lifetime, Stalin murdered millions of Ukrainians by deliberate starvation.
"As a result, most Ukrainians welcomed the German Wehrmacht in 1941 as liberators.
"It could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but unfortunately Hitler was determined to eradicate the Ukrainian 'Untermenschen', in order to integrate the Ukraine into the German Lebensraum.
"THE RELATIONSHIP between Ukraine and the Jews is no less complicated.
"Some Jewish writers, like Arthur Koestler and Shlomo Sand, believe that the Khazar empire that ruled the Crimea and neighboring territory a thousand years ago, converted to Judaism, and that most Ashkenazi Jews are descended from them.
"This would turn us all into Ukrainians. (Many early Zionist leaders indeed came from Ukraine.)
"When Ukraine was a part of the extensive Polish empire, many Polish noblemen took hold of large estates there.
"They employed Jews as their managers.
"Thus the Ukrainian peasants came to look upon the Jews as the agents of their oppressors, and anti-Semitism became part of the national culture of Ukraine.
"As we learned in school, at every turn of Ukrainian history, the Jews were slaughtered. The names of most Ukrainian folk-heroes, leaders and rebels who are revered in their homeland are, in Jewish consciousness, connected with awful pogroms.
Not unlike the new coalition government in Kiev that relied on Neo-Nazi snipers to drive a corrupt, duly elected president from office, BTW.
Israel and Ukraine » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
"In my lifetime, Stalin murdered millions of Ukrainians by deliberate starvation.
"As a result, most Ukrainians welcomed the German Wehrmacht in 1941 as liberators.
"It could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but unfortunately Hitler was determined to eradicate the Ukrainian 'Untermenschen', in order to integrate the Ukraine into the German Lebensraum.
"THE RELATIONSHIP between Ukraine and the Jews is no less complicated.
"Some Jewish writers, like Arthur Koestler and Shlomo Sand, believe that the Khazar empire that ruled the Crimea and neighboring territory a thousand years ago, converted to Judaism, and that most Ashkenazi Jews are descended from them.
"This would turn us all into Ukrainians. (Many early Zionist leaders indeed came from Ukraine.)
"When Ukraine was a part of the extensive Polish empire, many Polish noblemen took hold of large estates there.
"They employed Jews as their managers.
"Thus the Ukrainian peasants came to look upon the Jews as the agents of their oppressors, and anti-Semitism became part of the national culture of Ukraine.
"As we learned in school, at every turn of Ukrainian history, the Jews were slaughtered. The names of most Ukrainian folk-heroes, leaders and rebels who are revered in their homeland are, in Jewish consciousness, connected with awful pogroms.
Not unlike the new coalition government in Kiev that relied on Neo-Nazi snipers to drive a corrupt, duly elected president from office, BTW.
Israel and Ukraine » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names