Scholars focus on Ukraine’s Holocaust

paris -- Who is to blame for the killing of 1.4 million Jews in Nazi-occupied Ukraine? And what can be done now to dispel age-old anti-Semitism in Ukraine, honor the Jewish dead and move on?

For the first time, scholars from around the world shared documents and knowledge last week about the Holocaust in Ukraine at a Paris conference dedicated to this poorly understood passage in Adolf Hitler’s torrent of terror.

The talks were not easy, as resentment, frustration and emotion bubbled repeatedly to the surface among the researchers from Israel, Ukraine, Germany, the United States and elsewhere.

Although no major surprises emerged, pieces of Ukraine’s Holocaust came together as never before: killings of Jews in western Ukraine before the Nazis arrived, botched Soviet orders to evacuate Jews from the encroaching Germans, mass graves only now being discovered -- even as long-known Jewish grave sites are being abandoned, razed or used as open-air markets.

“We cannot underestimate this. It is historic; it is history that . . . may be changed based on new information,” said Mikhail Tyaglyy of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies.

History books too may need to be changed -- or written -- to explain how an estimated 1.4 million of Ukraine’s 2.4 million Jews disappeared from 1941to 1944. After repeated waves of emigration, only about 100,000 remain today, according to official figures.

Although the Holocaust has been well-documented in Western and Central Europe, few have studied what happened when the Nazis overran what is now Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and western Russia.

Soviet authorities discouraged such scholarship, content to keep history books focused on the costly Red Army victory over Hitler’s forces. Meanwhile, state-condoned suspicion of Jews continued to proliferate as it had since the pogroms of pre-revolutionary times.

Official indifference continues today. Tyaglyy did his research in near-isolation in his native Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, while colleagues worked in the capital, Kiev, or in Kharkiv in the east. Ukraine’s government has paid their studies little heed.

Last Monday, they earned welcome recognition as they joined the dais at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne for two days of talks. Related discussions continued at other venues in Paris throughout the week.

“This is two totally different universes coming together,” said the Rev. Patrick Desbois, a French Roman Catholic priest from a Paris-based group documenting Jewish mass graves in Ukraine. He was referring to the Ukrainian researchers long closed off from the rest of the world and their well-equipped Western counterparts.

It was Desbois’ work gathering testimonies from Ukrainian Holocaust witnesses that helped inspire the idea for the conference. These testimonies, including those of destitute villagers who had rarely spoken about what they had seen and done during the war, formed the most powerful evidence presented. Some testimonies are on display at Paris’ Holocaust Memorial.

Omer Bartov, a renowned Holocaust expert and history professor at Brown University, said such testimonies are only one step in understanding the Holocaust in Ukraine.

He described, for instance, how Ukrainian police started rounding up and killing Jews in the summer of 1941 in anticipation of German troops’ arrival.

The question of collaboration haunted the week’s talks. No consensus was reached on whether the witnesses interviewed by Desbois -- as well as others since deceased -- were willing participants or were just following orders in whatever actions they took.

Bartov said the gathering was also an important tool for confronting the apparent disregard for Jewish heritage in Ukraine today. He showed photos of Jewish schools, synagogues and cemeteries crumbling into disrepair.

Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, urged Ukraine and the conference participants to focus next “not just on commemorating Jewish death but also on celebrating Jewish life” in Ukraine.

Not everyone agreed. One participant asked why Jewish scholars should even bother studying Ukraine, given its history of hostility toward Jews.

Most Ukrainian participants reveled in the opportunity to share with fellow scholars. However, a few lamented that they were merely “invited to join” the conference and not asked to play a larger role in it.

Tyaglyy took a long-term view, saying the Holocaust “is tied to . . . the controversial, amorphous history of this country that is still defining itself. That is why today’s leaders are not touching this question. It is too difficult.”