Re: “Hero of Ukraine” Splits Nation, Inside and Out

 

The Soviet Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, Roman Rudenko, in his accusatory instruments against Nazi collaborators, did not mention Stepan Bandera or the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists despite, one can be certain, a definite agenda drafted in the Kremlin itself. The pre-eminent Jewish historian on the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, in his seminal work “The Destruction of the European Jews” does not mention Bandera or the OUN either. It’s true that Yad Vashem was not pleased with Raul Hilberg, not because he was not accurate, but because he failed to embellish upon Jewish heroism. Prosecutor Rudenko certainly had access to Soviet archives. Professor Hilberg based his work primarily on German archives. Jewish survivors’ eyewitness accounts were compiled by the Jewish Historical Institute in Krakow in 1945 immediately after the war with no impugning of Bandera and the OUN.

 

What is being offered as “new evidence” today isn’t really evidence at all. The unfortunate characteristic of this recent Holocaust historiography is that as time passes and memories fade, Holocaust “experts” feel compelled to find new demons. They cease to be historians and become political witch hunters.   

 

March 4, 2010                                                                         Askold S. Lozynskyj

 

Askold S. Lozynskyj, the son of an Auschwitz survivor, is a New York attorney and past President of the Ukrainian World Congress.