Memory of the Holocaust as a weapon in a hybrid war

[Editor's note: Earlier this year, a 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 1:45 pm EST at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Floor: 4th Floor, Grand Ballroom Salon H. Attendees must be registered for the convention.]

Originally appeared in Ukrainian@Istorychna Pravda

By Vitaly Nakhmanovych,
Historian and ethnopolitical scientist (Kyiv), researcher at the Kyiv History Museum

One of the declared goals of the Russian invasion has been the "denazification of Ukraine," i.e., the elimination of "a regime that glorifies Nazi henchmen," which automatically means shared responsibility for the Holocaust. In the future, the tragedies of the modern war will begin to overshadow those of the 20th century in people's memory. This will lead to a completely different dimension in the competition of memories, which until now has been limited to the victims of past totalitarian regimes.

On the eve of a large-scale war, Ukraine experienced a "war of memories" related to the activities of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BBHMC). Created in 2016 by Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs Pavel Fuks, Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, and Viktor Pinchuk, this foundation aims to build a grandiose Holocaust museum on the territory of the Jewish cemetery in Kyiv, near Babyn Yar.

This project was widely criticized by the public for its complete disregard for the non-Jewish victims of Babyn Yar, a desire to shift responsibility for the Holocaust to Ukrainians, and cultivating nostalgia for the USSR. But it was a "war" for the "correct" way of commemorating Nazi victims.

Now, the memory of the Holocaust is turning into a weapon in general wars as well. After all, one of the declared goals of the Russian invasion has been the "denazification of Ukraine," i.e., the elimination of "a regime that glorifies Nazi henchmen," which automatically means shared responsibility for the Holocaust for both the glorified and the glorifying.

In the future, the tragedies of the modern war will begin to overshadow the tragedies of the 20th century in people's memories. This will lead to a completely different dimension in the competition of memories, which until now has been limited to the victims of past totalitarian regimes.

So, how 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?

How and why is the memory of the Holocaust used as a weapon today?

Story No. 1

In January-February 2024, the Kyiv History Museum hosted the "Documents and Destinies" exhibition organized by the BBHMC. It is also scheduled to travel to Paris and open at the UNESCO headquarters. There were two key documents on display: a German order of 29 September 1941, demanding that "all Jews of the city of Kyiv and its suburbs" appear at the corner of Melnykova and Dehtiarivska streets, and an order from the commandant of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police about taking "all Jews, NKVD workers, and VKP(B) members" to the police or Jewish camp on Kerosynna Street.

In this way, the responsibility of the German occupation authorities for exterminating tens of thousands of Kyiv Jews was likened to that of the local auxiliary "Ukrainian" police, which was created by these authorities and whose orders they carried out.

Next, the topic of "Ukrainian responsibility" surfaced in every other personal story of the fallen Kyiv Jews. Meanwhile, not a single word was said about the rescuers who risked their lives and those of their families and even died for the sake of the Jews. The only exception is the story of Dina Pronicheva, who was "rescued by a policeman, who was actually a partisan." And this inclusion is not accidental. It would be natural if the exhibition commemorating Holocaust victims talked only about Jews and made no mention of the Roma people, prisoners of war, the mentally ill, and Ukrainian nationalists. But the organizers chose to make an exception for one category of Nazi victims, namely "NKVD employees and VKP(B) members," who had to be handed over to the police.

Another exhibited document is "Reference about the life of young people and Komsomol members in the Leninsky district during the fascist occupation." Although the presented fragment is about the mass execution of Jews, the choice of these documents is supposed to suggest that there were, in fact, two groups of victims — Jews and Soviet activists. Hence the choice of Pronicheva, who was rescued by a Soviet partisan rather than an average Kyiv resident.

Therefore, the BBHMC did not in any way abandon the basic points of its program: accusing Ukrainians of collaboration and glorifying the USSR, in particular, as the savior of the Jews. Not surprisingly, the website of this organization still presents as valid the historical narrative written in 2018 and the artistic concept by the infamous film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky.

Story No. 2

In the fall of 2023, Ukraina Moderna published an issue under the title "Holocaust in Ukraine: How the history of the crime is (not) to be written." It consisted of two parts: a forum with the same name and six academic papers, five of which were devoted to the complicity of the OUN, the Ukrainian police, or the local population in the Holocaust.

The forum was comprised of written answers to questions formulated by the editors. Their content can be reduced to the following points:

1. Responsibility and participation of local organizations and society as a whole during the Holocaust;
2. Responsibility of the so-called "observers";
3. The behavior of the non-Jewish population;
4. Prospects of comparative genocide research;
5. Personal stories and testimonies;
6. Gender studies in Holocaust research;
7. What other areas of Holocaust studies in Ukraine are promising?
8. What does Holocaust commemoration in Ukraine look like, and what should it be?

The key questions deal exclusively with the local non-Jewish population, its organizations, and their involvement in and responsibility for the Holocaust.

Thus, the discussion participants suggest that the commemoration should be focused precisely on the atonement of Ukrainians' guilt.

Two more questions relate to oral history and gender studies, which are in vogue today. Against this background, the question "What other areas of Holocaust studies in Ukraine are promising?" looks like outright mockery. 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?

Such questions already contain half of the answers, so it doesn't matter to whom they are addressed. While the editors simply invited heads of specialized structures from Ukraine, the selection of foreign participants was deliberate. These were members of the BBHMC academic council — one former (Dieter Pohl) and two current ones (Kai Struve and Martin C. Dean) — and three historians (Omer Bartov, Jared McBride, and John-Paul Himka) who for many years had been "exposing" Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainians in general and blaming them for complicity in the Holocaust. However, none of them is known as a specialist in gender studies, oral history, or comparative genocide analysis.

In 2017, Ukraina Moderna published the issue entitled "The Jewish History of Ukrainian Territories," which also dealt mainly with World War II events but at least was not limited exclusively to Ukrainian crimes. The 2017 issue was about history, while the 2023 one addressed the questions of responsibility and memory.

Why do Russian proxies from the BBMHC and pro-European left liberals from Ukraina Moderna see eye to eye with regard to the Holocaust in Ukraine? Let us consider the situation in a broader context.

In January 2024, UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps announced that the era of peace that began 35 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall was coming to an end, and we had moved from a post-war world to a pre-war one. Shapps viewed Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as the new "axis of evil" and considered Russian aggression in Ukraine, Israel's war against Hamas, and Houthi attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea as the first harbingers of a new world war.

The approaching great war is acutely felt on the frontiers of the free world. Sweden and Finland have joined NATO; Norway has allowed exporting weapons to Ukraine; Japan has changed its defense strategy; South Korea is discussing the idea of having its own atomic bomb.

But the ideological war has been going on for a long time, and the memory of the Holocaust occupies a prominent place in it. The first example is from the Holy Land. Hamas' brutal attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the killing of about 1,200 mostly peaceful people, and the capture of some 250 hostages awakened memories of the atrocities of total destruction in the public consciousness of Israelis and Jews worldwide.

Of course, neither the scale of this crime nor the true capabilities of Hamas are comparable to those of the Nazis, although the October 2023 events became the largest mass murder of Jews since World War II. But the memory of the Holocaust for Israel and world Jewry is not just a memory of the last-century tragedy.

The State of Israel has always positioned itself as a place where the Jews will be protected from any new attempts at mass destruction. At the same time, constant reminders about the Holocaust were supposed to ensure the support of the Jewish state from the world community. Instead, the Israeli state failed to protect, and the Holocaust memory failed to safeguard the Jews.

For its part, Hamas, its allies, and its sympathizers promote the vision of Israel's retaliatory action in the Gaza Strip as a genocide against Palestinians, which "the aggressor justifies" by pointing to Holocaust victims and memory. And Russia's position is very telling here.

The key ideological component of modern Russian revanchism is the "Religion of Victory." This is a pagan cult of the "Golden Age," which came after the "Great Patriotic War" when the USSR nearly reached the status of the most powerful state in the world and was treated with a mixture of gratitude, respect, and fear.

The global goal of modern Russia is to return to those times, the slogan being "We can repeat!" and the ritual taking the form of solemn celebrations of "Great Victory" anniversaries.

The Kremlin viewed the attack on Ukraine as the first step on the way to the restored "Golden Age." After all, the Russian leadership openly announced in late 2021 its goal of pushing NATO back to the Soviet-time borders and creating the so-called "multipolar world," in which Russia would once again play a leading role.

Vladimir Putin formulated the position regarding Ukraine in the summer of 2021 in the programmatic article "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians." He contrasted the political regime, which, in his words, glorified Russia's enemies from Mazepa to Bandera and pandered to modern "radicals and neo-Nazis," with the Ukrainian people that gave rise to "true patriots and victors, who have always been a source of pride Ukraine."

Putin called on Ukrainians to overthrow the "neo-Nazi regime" and return to the common state and the common "Religion of Victory." This remains the official goal of Russian aggression.

The Holocaust is not at the forefront of modern Russian ideology, even though, in contrast to Soviet times, the role of the Soviet Army in saving the Jews from total destruction has been emphasized at the official level.

While the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was established by the UN in 2005 on the day when the Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz death camp, it never achieved official status in Russia itself.

Instead, since 2014, Russia has officially marked this day, 27 January, as one of its "military glory" days, namely the Day of the Complete Liberation of Leningrad from the Fascist Blockade in 1944.

The competition of memories began to manifest itself in the early 2020s. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the solemn commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation in Israel in January 2020, it turned into Putin's one-man performance. Prominent Israeli politicians took turns thanking the "high-ranking guest" for the liberation of the death camp. Putin opened a monument to the Leningrad siege victims in downtown Jerusalem and declared that "the siege of Leningrad and the Holocaust cannot be compared to anything." In the fall of the same year, the Russian Ministry of Education deleted the International Holocaust Remembrance Day from the 2020–21 calendar of educational events.

The return to the Soviet vision of Holocaust memory was finalized by the Russian Foreign Ministry in early 2024. On 22 January, its website published the answer of Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, to questions from the media regarding the decision of the Government of Germany to join the UN International Court of Justice proceedings as a third party in a case between South Africa and Israel. The main object of "criticism" was the German government, which "took a course on undermining Russia's effort to prevent the rehabilitation of Nazism" and was "more active than others in the European Union in defending the Kyiv regime, which declared the heroization of fascist collaborators a key component of its domestic and foreign policies."

However, the focus was on German-Israeli relations. Russia criticized the "unconditional support that Berlin always extends to Israel" despite "the outrage that the collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is causing around the world." Russia was most infuriated by the fact that Germany motivated its support with its own "history and crime against humanity in the form of the Holocaust."

To begin with, Zakharova authoritatively explained that "according to the Resolution of the General Assembly and a number of other international documents, the Holocaust is the persecution and mass destruction by the Nazis of representatives of various ethnic and social groups." And then she spelled out the history of the crimes of Nazi Germany against the peoples of the USSR, which Germany refused to recognize as genocide.

"All of this suggests that Berlin decided to single out only one part of what constitutes its historical guilt before humanity, namely the topic of the Holocaust, and, furthermore, to consider it not in its entirety but only from an angle it finds beneficial at the moment," Zakharova said.

So, while Ukraine and Israel are vying for the world's attention in terms of financial, media, and military support, Russia has already ideologically united them, for its purposes, with Germany and other European countries, which adhere to the "unspoken dogmas of the 'rules-based order' defined by Washington."

One of the key Russian challenges to this "Washington order" is the demand to replace the commemoration of the Jewish Holocaust victims with repentance and material compensation for the losses of "the entire Soviet people" and primarily ethnic Russians.

The paradox is that the feeling of guilt for Nazi crimes against Russia (with which the former USSR is exclusively identified) is exactly the factor still preventing Germany from providing full assistance to Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression.

However, the Kremlin has found the West's vulnerability around which modern European society is built. Europe was busy creating "heaven on earth," while Putin's Russia was "rising from its knees," building up its army, testing the limits of the West's patience in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria, and dreaming of returning to the "glorious past." For over 30 years, the countries of the Old World reduced their armies and military industry, developed the global economy, raised taxes on businesses, and waited for the "end of history" and the universal victory of the democratic order.

Using cheap gas from Russia, cheap goods from China, and cheap labor from the entire "global South," the West has been able to build social democratic states dominated by pacifism, tolerance, human rights, and multiculturalism. A new religion emerged at the center of this happy and carefree life, namely the "Religion of the Holocaust." The Holocaust is a crime that completely denies all these values, and modern Europe can be most resolute in applying the slogan "Never again!" to it. However, while the Russian "Religion of Victory" has a distinctly pagan character, the "Religion of the Holocaust" imitates Christianity. The churches are replaced with Holocaust memorials and museums; visiting them is a substitute for pilgrimage, while repentance for sins takes the form of constantly repenting for complicity in the extermination of the Jews. The only difference is that instead of repenting for personal sins before God in private, one must publicly repent of the sins of the nation before the Jews.

This ritual also comes in handy for personal needs. After the Hamas attack and the launch of a retaliatory action by Israel, the X (formerly Twitter) network, owned by Elon Musk, came under increasing criticism for antisemitism due to excessive anti-Israel posts. In this situation, instead of revising the "editorial policy," Musk demonstratively visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial in January 2024 and participated in a round table on antisemitism. The American billionaire was sincerely convinced that this "pilgrimage" would be the best answer to all accusations.

However, the "Religion of the Holocaust" fell into the trap typical of most secular cults that appeal to the experience of a certain phenomenon. Declared a "unique historical event," the Holocaust remained in the category of concrete historical events, failing to become an exclusively symbolic phenomenon. In Jewish memory, it is an integral part and the apogee of the history of antisemitism.

Yad Vashem's reaction to Zakharova's performance is indicative in that instead of analyzing all the components of this "manifesto," it focused on the key threat to the unique and concrete status of the Holocaust: "Yad Vashem views the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry as a serious distortion of the Holocaust. Contrary to the said statement, the Holocaust was an unprecedented systematic genocide carried out by the Nazis to destroy the Jewish people... The Russian Foreign Ministry would do well to leave the Holocaust alone in its pursuit of a political agenda."

As far as Western memory is concerned, it would seem natural to treat the Holocaust as a "unique phenomenon" outside the limits of historical time and space. Instead, since no historical phenomenon can "hang in the air" in the material world, the European consciousness turned the entire Second World War into a "unique phenomenon" and absolutized "good and evil" in its context. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the 2005 UN General Assembly resolution on Holocaust remembrance, whose content Zakharova tried to manipulate, refers in its preamble to "the indelible link between the United Nations and the unique tragedy of the Second World War." The resolution mentions the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, "which was adopted in order to avoid repetition of genocides such as those committed by the Nazi regime." This thesis is repeated by the UN General Assembly resolution on Holocaust denial (2007): "remembrance of the Holocaust is a key component of the prevention of further acts of genocide."

The paradox is that these resolutions were adopted after Srebrenica, Rwanda, and Darfur, recognized as genocides by the world community. In other words, even though remembrance of the Holocaust did not prevent further similar crimes, the UN continued to call for the non-repetition of what is inextricably linked exclusively with Nazism and World War II. This gap in consciousness is well illustrated in the Ukrainian context.

Story No. 3

In 2015, Western academics published an open letter protesting against the laws on decommunization adopted by the Verkhovna Rada. The authors motivated their protest using the following arguments:

• An alleged ban on criticizing the UPA, which "executed tens of thousands of Poles," and the OUN, "which collaborated with Nazi Germany" and "participated in Jewish pogroms in Ukraine";
• The injustice of "condemning the entire Soviet period as the occupation of Ukraine";
• Oppression based on historical memory: "1.5 million Ukrainians who died fighting the Nazis in the ranks of the Red Army deserve respect just as much as those who fought against the Red Army and the NKVD. Those who consider the victory over Nazi Germany as one of the key historical moments should not be intimidated or feel like exiles."

This letter was signed by 64 historians, including 16 from Germany and Austria.

No other collective appeals from the Western academic community (e.g., addressed to Putin) appeared from the beginning of the Russian aggression in 2014 until December 2023, when 67 prominent German researchers and politicians criticized the German government for providing too little support to Ukraine. Only two of the 16 signatories of the 2015 statement supported the 2023 appeal: Martin Schulze Wessel from Munich and Andreas Kappeler from Vienna.

Why, when it comes to the Holocaust in Ukraine, do the positions of (pro-)European, (pro-)Jewish, and (pro-)Kremlin actors coincide? Why did Natan Sharansky, a former Jewish dissident and Soviet prisoner of conscience, become the head of the BBHMC supervisory board? Why did the Cannes Film Festival jury award a special prize to Sergei Loznitsa's Ukrainophobic film Babyn Yar. Context commissioned by the BBHMC?

Why did Patrick Desbois, a French Catholic priest who opened Europe's eyes to the "Holocaust by bullets," i.e., mass executions of Jews by shooting on the territory of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, later begin documenting not the Holodomor or the deportation of the Crimean Tatars but the siege of Leningrad and the Battle of Stalingrad, eventually accepting the top position on the BBHMC academic council?

On the one hand, they are all interested in uncovering the history of Ukrainian complicity in the Holocaust: (pro-)European figures for repentance, (pro-)Jewish ones for preventing antisemitism, and (pro-)Kremlin ones for accusing and undermining Ukrainian statehood. On the other hand, they all emphasize the exceptionally positive role the USSR played in World War II: (pro-)European and (pro-)Jewish representatives do so because of the primacy of anti-Nazism, while (pro-)Kremlin ones, out of nostalgia and to promote the Russian imperial idea. The outcome of their activities is lamentable for Ukraine.

However, discussing further prospects only makes sense when we consider the global changes facing the current world order. Their signs can be seen not only in Russian imperial revanchism, the spread of aggressive Islamic fundamentalism, armed aggression in Ukraine and Israel, or expected wars in Taiwan or Korea. Equally important are serious changes within the Western world itself:

• The growth of xenophobia and isolationism as a reaction to the explosive growth of the number of migrants and refugees;
• The growing political weight of extreme right and extreme left forces, which consciously seek to destroy the foundations of traditional democracy based on the separation of powers and freedom of speech;
• The bankruptcy of pacifism and the theory that democracy would spread worldwide thanks to economic globalization.

The final victory of these trends will not simply lead to the destruction of the left-liberal world with its fundamental values. In order to preserve the democratic foundations of their own order, Western countries will have to revise many of their key ideas. This process is unlikely to leave the "Religion of the Holocaust" untouched. Crucially, in the renewed world, remembrance of the Holocaust should stop contributing to the Nuremberg myth about World War II as a victory of absolute good over total evil. Otherwise, it will be impossible to get rid of the myth of communism and the Soviet Union as part of the global good and, therefore, to change the attitude towards Russia as the direct descendant of the USSR.

Ukraine cannot stay aside from this process because remembrance of the Holocaust is a powerful weapon in the hands of our enemies today. Just like in physical warfare, it is impossible to "just stop shooting" in the war of memories. Therefore, rather than blindly following the path of the Russian, Western European, or Jewish-Israeli discourse, we need to look for the foundation of this remembrance in our own history.

Which is more important in the long run: remembering the Holocaust in Ukraine or remembering it the way current external actors want?

The first step should be shifting attention from criminal orders and actions to false ideas and delusional morals, which were the source and basis of genocides. This will turn the Holocaust from a "unique event" into a universal symbol of all genocides. Ukraine alone experienced four genocides during the last century, and the fifth one is unfolding before our eyes now.

At the same time, there should be a shift in emphasis from criminals to the righteous, from exclusive condemnation and repentance for the past to honoring and inspiration for the future. Furthermore, Holocaust remembrance should turn from a component of secular pseudoreligions into a subject of deep conceptualization by Judaism and Christianity, traditional religions that have always considered Jewish history as symbolic.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Vasyl Starko.

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