"A shift in emphasis" or a search for the truth? How Ukraine should respond to the memory of the Holocaust being instrumentalized during the war

[Editor's note: Earlier this year, a lively debate took place in Ukrainian media about the Holocaust and memory in the context of Russia's criminal war against Ukraine. On 18-19 November, we offer two points of view on this topic by leading Ukrainian historians Vitaly Nakhmanovych and Petro Dolhanov. For those attending this year's ASEEES Annual Convention, the question of memory will be further explored during a roundtable book discussion of Babyn Yar: History and Memory (edited by Vladyslav Hrynevych, Sr., and Paul Robert Magocsi) with Olga Kiyan, Norman Naimark, and Amber Nickell on 21 November, 12:00 to 1:45pm EST at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, 4th Floor, Grand Ballroom, Salon H. Attendees must be registered for the convention.]

Originally appeared in Ukrainian @Istorychna Pravda

Petro Dolhanov,
PhD in History, Holocaust history researcher

The successful and free development of Holocaust studies will itself testify to the absurdity of the Kremlin's propaganda arguments. A more detailed study of the semitones often used by Russian propagandists to instrumentalize the topic is perhaps the best "weapon" in counterpropaganda.

Istorychna Pravda publishes a response to Vitaly Nakhmanovych's text "Memory of the Holocaust as a weapon in a hybrid war" and reminds its readers that it remains a platform for academic and journalistic discussions of history and memory policies. We are open to all competent points of view and opinions. 

"Is Babyn Yar needed after Bucha?" was the question that provoked public indignation half a year ago due to its unethical nature: how can the memory of one genocide suppress or erase the memory of another genocide? The organizers then scrapped the planned discussion due to Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel. However, one of the organizers, Vitaly Nakhmanovych, continues to raise the question.

At the beginning of his recent article, "Memory of the Holocaust as a weapon in a hybrid war," he asks: "[H]ow should the memory of the Holocaust be handled in Ukraine if, on the one hand, it is used to undermine the very idea of Ukrainian independence and, on the other, it obscures the memory of today's victims?"

Nakhmanovych presents many arguments, which, in his opinion, should demonstrate the "destructive" role played by the memory of the Holocaust and, more broadly, studies of Nazi crimes in current realities. The article concludes with the question: "Which is more important in the long run: remembering the Holocaust in Ukraine or remembering it the way current external actors want?" To this, Nakhmanovych offers the following answer: "... there should be a shift in emphasis from perpetrators to the righteous..."

Among the publications criticized by Nakhmanovych is the last issue of Ukraina Moderna entitled "The Holocaust in Ukraine: How the History of a Crime is (Not) Written." In his opinion, the editors paid too much attention to "inconvenient" episodes having to do with the involvement of the local organizations and population in the Holocaust. Nakhmanovych notes that this topic is the focus of as many as five of the six papers in the issue.

Nakhmanovych also questions the advisability of some of the questions in the journal's discussion forum, as they " deal exclusively with the local non-Jewish population, its organizations, and their involvement in and responsibility for the Holocaust."

I was the guest editor of this issue, so I am largely responsible for formulating the forum's questions and selecting papers. However, I don't think I have to make excuses.

First, my colleagues and I obviously could not know exactly what materials would be submitted when we issued a call for papers for this thematic issue. Nor could we know which submissions would pass anonymous peer review for academic quality, integrity, and ultimately make it into the final issue. Moreover, three papers, which constituted a separate section, "Remembrance of the Holocaust," and were not related to the study of the role played by the local non-Jewish population during the Holocaust, were moved to the next issue, No. 35, for technical reasons at the last moment.

In any case, the topics of the journal's articles reflect the general landscape of academic Holocaust studies in Ukraine. They are not the result of any "ideological preferences" on the part of the editorial board. It so happens that some Ukrainian researchers are currently interested in studying the participation of the local population and organizations in the Holocaust. Among them are Daniil Sytnyk and Tetiana Borodina, who research local stories about how the auxiliary police were formed and their role during the Holocaust.

If you read their articles carefully, they problematize and consistently reject most of the Russian propaganda theses about the role of "Banderites" or "Ukrainian nationalists" during the Holocaust. For example, Sytnyk's research also includes an article in the thematic "Holocaust in Ukraine" issue and a paper in the "Overcoming the Past" section on Ukraina Moderna's website. He consistently demonstrates the multiethnic and extremely heterogeneous composition of the Kyiv auxiliary police in 1941–43, showing that the police staff members were not always nationalists, OUN members, or even Ukrainians.

It is such deep and comprehensive studies of the structure and organization of the auxiliary police and not the "shift in emphasis" recommended by Nakhmanovych that can become the proper way to debunk Kremlin propaganda. These serious academic studies can also evoke an adequate response in the Western academic communities.

The special issue entitled "Holocaust in Ukraine" included an article by Roman Mykhalchuk and the present author, which looked at the role the local population played in the looting of Jewish property in the town of Mizoch during the Holocaust. We could see similar things in the first weeks of the Russian war. The spirit of solidarity and help prevailed in Ukraine. This was clearly visible in the efforts to evacuate citizens who found themselves under occupation in Zaporizhia, Kherson, and other regions. By chance, I encountered this issue while assisting several colleagues in escaping the occupation. Transportation prices fluctuated daily. The greater the threat posed by the occupiers, the higher the cost of transporting individuals from the occupied regions through checkpoints to Ukrainian-controlled territory. Clearly, if it were not for the carriers, many Ukrainians would have lost any chance of getting out of the occupied territories. But the truth was that some carriers made money from it.

Similar behavior was observed during the Holocaust. Some people looted the property of their persecuted Jewish neighbors, while others hid them, sometimes in exchange for material compensation. Instead of "shifting the emphasis," we should study both types of behavior to better understand human nature, particularly the role of extra-ideological factors as important motivators of behavior during war and in extreme situations. My research is about studying the behavior of the "local non-Jewish population" rather than Ukrainians. I also study the behavior of the Polish and Czech populations, as well as other ethnic groups that lived in western Volyn.

Consequently, I have no regrets about publishing this article and intend to continue my research on the looting of Jewish property during the Holocaust in western Volyn. I aspire to write a comprehensive monograph on this subject.

Thus, even though the editorial board of the journal did not plan such a thematic selection of articles, it turned out to be extremely relevant not only from an academic standpoint but also in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war. That is why questions related to the complicity of the local population and organizations in the Holocaust were included in the discussion forum. Nakhmanovych calls them "key." "Are the authors suggesting that the fundamental questions about the general causes and ideological origins of the Holocaust, its international political and military context, a comparison of how Jews fared in various Nazi-occupied and Nazi-allied countries, and the phenomenology of salvation and Jewish resistance are not promising and do not deserve a separate discussion?" he asks rhetorically.

I believe that the fundamental questions about the causes and ideological origins of the Holocaust are among the most important for Holocaust studies. Still, I also think that the answers should not be sought in occupied Ukraine. Meanwhile, our issue was directly about the events of the Holocaust in Ukraine. That is why, when preparing the list of questions for the discussion forum on the Holocaust in occupied Ukraine, I recommended discussing other issues that did not resonate so obviously with the main points of Russian propaganda, which paints "Ukrainian nationalists" as playing an almost central role in the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes.

Nakhmanovych rightly points out that no experts from the field of gender studies were involved in the discussion forum. I fully agree with this critical remark and recognize it as my own fault. In my defense, I can only say that we sent out at least twice as many invitations as the number of researchers who eventually joined the forum. Unfortunately, I received negative answers from several academics; a few simply did not respond to my emails, while others failed to keep their promises.

However, the issue of gender studies, which is "in vogue" (as Nakhmanovych somewhat disparagingly noted) was kept in the discussion forum as it is important for modern Holocaust studies.

Nakhmanovych concludes his criticism of the thematic issue by defining Ukraina Moderna's editorial board as "pro-European left liberals." I have never considered myself a "left liberal" and, in general, have not tried to position myself clearly on the political spectrum.

I believe that such rhetoric can be considered part of semi-propaganda discourse. It is also important to remember that there was a time when liberal sounded like a bad word. It was the 1930s, especially on the eve of World War II. At that time, communist, Nazi, and, more broadly, right-wing radical discourse discredited any forms of moderation or, in general, manifestations of ordinary human decency. People who viewed the world from non-radical positions were stigmatized and relegated to the background. We remember very well what it led to. Today, the word liberal has acquired a similar status in Kremlin propaganda.

I do not support Nakhmanovych's proposal regarding the direction in which academic Holocaust studies should develop in Ukraine. "Shifting the emphasis from perpetrators to the righteous" does not seem to be a very effective formula. Here, the author's rhetoric itself contains evaluative judgments. First, historians cannot try on the role of prosecutors or judges. Second, Nakhmanovych's evaluative judgments are based on Raul Hilberg's historiographical typology (perpetrators, victims, and bystanders), which is already outdated in Holocaust studies. Today, this conceptual apparatus is subject to significant criticism as sources increasingly testify that this triad is far from a complete set of roles that can be performed by people who are at the epicenter of an unfolding genocide.

The same people could act as perpetrators/instigators, rescuers, or bystanders in a genocidal process. They could become beneficiaries (receiving or buying for nothing the houses and belongings of the murdered) or facilitators to victims and threatened groups, providing food and showing them ways to escape. Alternatively, they could chase away Jews who came to ask for help and hand them over to the German gendarmerie or policemen, kill them with their own hands, join the "hunt" for surviving Jews, dig graves and fill them with dirt again, perform labor duties, etc. This list of things the local population could do is far from complete.

If we heed Nakhmanovich's recommendation, we should study only one of these roles, namely that of a rescuer, ignoring all the others. Therefore, if, for example, an auxiliary police officer saved Jews he knew, we would have to write about him as a rescuer, turning a blind eye to the fact that he could have participated in the murder of other Jews who were not too familiar or close to him. Or if peasants helped the Jews in exchange for some material gain (a fairly common form of behavior in those times) and thus failed to receive the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations, shouldn't we study their activities?

Academic studies should be free from such imposed, non-productive methodological limitations. Otherwise, academic research will be replaced with memory policies and counterpropaganda. The latter is very important in war conditions, but this is a somewhat different field of activity.

The successful and free development of Holocaust studies will itself testify to the absurdity of the Kremlin's propaganda arguments. A more detailed study of the semitones often used by Russian propagandists to instrumentalize the topic is perhaps the best "weapon" in counterpropaganda. After all, this will provide us with many arguments in favor of our position. And only then will we be able to join the international Holocaust discourse and prove our respectable position there. However, this requires research, publications, and discussions rather than "a shift in emphasis."

Translated from the Ukrainian by Vasyl Starko.

NOTE: UJE does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in articles and other materials published on its website and social media pages. Such materials are posted to promote discussion related to Ukrainian-Jewish interactions and relations. The website and social media pages will be places of information that reflect varied viewpoints.