Answer to the article from The Jewish Chronicle article - 18/03/2011

Dear Editor, 

We react to the article you have published in your edition of 18/03/2011 (“street of shame”).

First of all, we would like to thank you for your article but we also want to underline some facts and to comment some of the testimonies published in your article :

1) Regarding Bandera and the Ukrainian war criminals :

The streets that are being named after Ukrainian Nazi criminals (e.g. Bandera, Shukhevitch , … )  and the monuments (statues, etc …) that have been erected to their memories are not only located in Kiev but in the whole of West Ukraine . In the city of Chernovtsy – the city where we are based - one can find one street named ‘Roman Shukhevitch Vul’.

This is exactly like if there was a street named ‘Heinrich Himmler Strasse’ in Munich or a street named ‘Rue Pierre Laval’ in Marseilles.

This must not be tolerated at any cost and must be fought.

Maybe that the precise history of Ukrainian war criminal is not very well known but facts are clear: Bandera and Shukhevitch (to mention only these two ones) were anti-Semitics, collaborationists and Nazi criminals. The fact that they are now being considered as ‘Heroes’ by West Ukrainians is deeply abnormal .I would like to mention that the collapse of the USSR have led to an official Ukrainian nationalistic propaganda and to the publishing of false history books by Revisionists Ukrainian writers with the clear intention to try to convince not only Ukrainians but also foreigners that these ‘Heroes’ were not ‘really anti-Semitic’ and were not ‘really Nazis’.

At this moment in time, one of the pillars of the foundation of the modern Ukrainian state is based on Anti-Semitic criminals that are considered as ‘Heroes’ .Beyond all, that is very disquieting because their importance is growing everyday.

Should we conceal this fact, like officials do because of the fear of a civil war between the eastern part and the western part of Ukraine? Should we adopt the ‘official Kiev’ attitude that consist in admitting that these historical figures were Nazi criminals but were also Heroes (sic)? Should we stay in the comfort of the center of Kiev, in a bubble, completely disconnected of the Ukrainian reality? Should we stay in the comfort of a big lie? I guess not.

The history of Ukrainian nationalism is very complicated and the Ukrainians have this very special ability to obfuscate the truth and to dissimulate the reality to foreigners.

Many ‘tricks’ are being used by the revisionist biographers of Bandera and by the revisionist historians of the related organizations (OUN-B, etc …) in order to convince the ‘external’ world that these people and their organizations were not ‘really’ Anti-Semitics (They just murdered or helped to murder everybody that was not a pure Ukrainian race)and that the ‘Banderas’ eventually fought the German (which is completely grotesque since the Banderas had been totally integrated in the local SS divisions until the very end of WWII).

2) Regarding the non restitution of the Jewish buildings:

In your article , Chabad’s Rabbi Menachem Mendel said (*) :

‘Of course that there are Jewish buildings or property from before the Second World War or the Communist period, which now belong to the government, but I guess that if we will ask for it back — we will receive. Don’t forget that Jews in Ukraine are only two or three per cent of the population, so of course we are the minority here.”’

One may first precise why the Jewish population in Ukraine is currently so low:

-         The collapse of the Soviet Union led gradually to a situation of impoverishment of the population and many Jews had no other choices but to migrate to Israel.

-         The Soviet Union was a multicultural society and racism was officially banned in all the soviet republics. After its collapse, many forms of Racisms and Anti-Semitisms raised in the former republics and especially in Ukraine and that also led many Ukrainians Jews to move definitely to Israel.

For example, in the city of Chernovtsy whose 50% of the population was Jew before the Second World War, even after the Holocaust and the integration of North Bukovina in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, the Jewish population and culture remained important. From 1991 to 2009, most of this Jewish population had no choice but to move to Israel. This is the general comment of the ‘average’ Ukrainian citizen: “There are very few Anti-Semitism Problems in current Ukraine because 'we' forced all the Jews to leave during the last 20 years” … and some even add with an horrible smile , “Those that we didn’t kill during War world II”. 

The fact that the Ukrainian Government would give back the Jewish Buildings if they were asked to is completely unrealistic. In the only town of Chernovtsy, that would mean giving back more than 50% of the heart of the city!

Regarding the appropriation of Jewish buildings, one must understand the following process:

When the Soviet Union won the Second World War, it took incidentally control of western Ukraine. The USSR was the winner and to some historical logic (‘the winner takes it all’) it might have the right to appropriate itself the Jewish building since , for the USSR , private property was not really existing so that these buildings , like any others were to being used for and by the people . Since the communist society was supposed to be perfectly atheist, all churches, religious temples were closed, used for archiving. Since all citizens were equals and defined as workers , there was no point to consider a ‘Jewish Theater’ or a Synagogue .For example, in Chernovtsy, the Jewish house, a big building located in the center of the city, was transformed into a place for culture, dance theater, etc …The synagogue was transformed into a movie theater . The Jewish schools were transformed into public communist schools.

Now, when the USSR collapsed, what kind of rights had the buyers and the sellers of this former Jews real-estate? It is very clear that only because of corruption several people managed to ‘buy’ or illegally acquire or transfer the former Jewish real estate .The fact that the Ukrainian ‘state’ took possession of the vast majority of this real estate is also perfectly abnormal .On the opposite, all the Orthodox churches were not only restituted free of charge to the Orthodox Clergy but also thoroughly restored. 

Some old synagogues had been bought by ‘businessmen’ who curently use them as warehouse for cattle or as garages. How did these ‘businessmen’ took possession of the buildings?

3) Regarding the big recurring problems with the pilgrimage in Uman:

One must understand that many Ukrainians simply do not work, do not have access to culture facilities .They just stay in the streets doing nothing (most of the time they are drunken) and when they see a foreigner they start to provoke him with a xenophobic attitude . So one can easily imagine their reactions towards Jewish pilgrims! (**)

This is obviously a ‘Hot’ subject in Ukraine and nobody really wants to tell the truth about it. But from our point of view, this is important to bring the light on it and to fight what we consider as an emerging disquieting  threat.

U.K.R.L.A.A

(*) : (I also add, on a very personal note, that the idea of the Ukrainian ‘state’ giving back something that belongs to them only if – kindly – asked to, is really comic. I guess they might be willing to give back some of the Jewish real estate they own if one pay the price - usually 10 times the price of the building - to be paid cash in U.S dollars to their offshore account –

Joseph Litchblau)

(**)  Regarding the tensions in Uman between the 'locals' and  Jewish pilgrims , one can have a look at the following article that relates the death of Shmuel Tubul while he was on a pilgrimage to Uman .

Article  from The Jewish Chronicle

The case of Mr. Stefan Bandera

The case of Mr. Stefan Bandera

In most libraries of western Ukraine, one can find books from and about Stefan Bandera.

Who was that man?

If asked, your new Ukrainians friends will tell you , with an apparent good faith and enthusiasm , that he was a true hero, a patriot, a courageous politician and ideologue that fought the Nazis and contributed to build Ukraine as a free independent nation.

Nothing can be more far from the truth than this.

At this stage, most people would cope with this rather flattering portrait.

But let us try to go a bit further:

A quick search on the internet leads to the wikipedia page about Stefan Bandera. And it is mentioned that he is a “controversial” figure, so that the nice portrait of Bandera pictured by your Ukrainian friends is starting to show several important flaws.

When re-asked, your Ukrainian friends might tell you that, in fact, Bandera is considered as a hero by the Ukrainians … and as a war criminal by the Russians, and they will end their answer by telling you that this doesn’t change anything to the fact that Bandera was a true Hero.

Then you might question yourself how is it possible that a war partisan hero might be considered as a criminal by those – the Russians – who above all much valued all resistance to the Nazi troops.

Is, for example, Jean Moulin, the French hero, being considered as a war criminal by Russia or England? No of course!
So apparently something is definitely wrong with Mr. Stefan Bandera.

Looking deeper, we will learn that Mr. Stefan Bandera occupied a position as an officer in the SS troops!  That is becoming weirder …Who was that man to be a Hero? Was he a spy? Did he infiltrate the deep of the Nazi organization in order to outwit their evil plans? Not really!

Now didn’t the Nazi SS troops commit horrible atrocities against the Ukrainian people? So how can it be that Bandera is considered as a Hero?

*

In fact, Bandera was a convinced fascist, a collaborationist and an active Ukrainian Nazi. He took part in the occupation of Ukraine by the SS troops and was as such implied with all the subsequent horror.


What makes the Ukrainians think that Bandera fought the Nazis is the following trick, frequently used by his revisionist biographers:

In the middle of the World War II, in 1942 ( he started apparently to change his strategy at the end of 1941 ) , Bandera decided to “stop” his collaboration with the SS troops because, apparently, he had the feeling to have been “deceived” by the Nazi policy in Ukraine (sic). 

It is true that a part of the Ukrainian population welcomed the SS troops as “liberators” from the communism. After they quickly realized that the SS troops were effectively considering to “delivering” massively the Ukrainians, not only from the communism but also from life, the Ukrainians started to realize their unfathomable mistake and engaged a strong collective resistance.

But this is not the story of Bandera.
Bandera was for a long time associated with the repressions and murdering of his fellows compatriots.

What is likely to have happened is that Bandera finally realized that Hitler had no intention to give him the position of “Gauleiter” of Nazi Ukraine and this, for a precise reason: in the mind of the Nazis, all that was speaking Russian had to be eradicated sooner or later, the Slavic people had to be eradicated and that was including this poor Ukraine, so that there could not exist any Nazi Ukraine because the whole of Ukraine had to be razed. 

Following his sudden move, Bandera was immediately imprisoned by the Nazis, and they probably had in mind to quickly getting rid of him.

But at the time Bandera decided to stop his “collaboration”, the situation of the Nazi troops on the eastern front had became very different of what it was at the time of the invasion of Ukraine: The Russian Soviet resistance was extremely strong and in Ukraine, the actions of the partisans were severely striking their assets.

*

Killing Bandera, who had created opportunely a nationalistic Ukrainian party, would have drawn a considerable amount of Ukrainians “wait-and-see people” or collaborationists against the Nazi occupation troops.

Bandera  was imprisoned to the 'VIP' area of Matthausen ( closed to the German troops facilities ) where a  SS officer would visit him on a regular basis and would ask him the same question : "Now , mein herren , would you want to return working with the Fuhrer ?" .

Bandera did probably understood at the opportune time the difficulties of  Hitler's troops to fight the red army and he did consider that he was too much valuable as a collaborationist, for the Nazis, to be threatened.

And indeed, he was soon freed and re-established as a collaborationist leader. But, instead of restarting his collaboration, Bandera preferred to escape and hide himself, foreseeing probably the fall of the Nazis. (In fact it is reported that, in 1943, Bandera replied to the Nazis that he didn’t wanted to collaborate anymore with a power that had no chance of winning the war. This man even betrayed the Nazis!)



Bandera then survived the end of the war.


He found his place in western Germany, more precisely he hide himself using a false identity, in the town of Munich. He found new allies wanting to use him to weaken the Ukrainian soviet republic by funding his nationalistic organization.

In 1959, Kroutchev finally ordered the assassination of this man who was still representing a danger for the post-war Ukrainian soviet.

*

Now, this man, active Nazi collaborationist, SS officer, implied in the mass-murdering and repression of Ukrainian partisans is being considered as a messianic ideologue and a Hero in West Ukraine and had been made officially "Hero of Ukraine" by the president Iouchenko in January 2010 (This have been canceled and judged anti-constitutional since, thanks to the new president of Ukraine, Viktor Ianoukovitch )

There can be no doubt that the history of Bandera has been rewritten by his zealous modern biographers for the need of the ignorant popular masses:

"Stefan Bandera who fought the Nazis , organized the Ukrainian resistance and him who had been savagely murdered by the Soviet regime , was a true mentor of the Ukrainian nation whom he loved amongst all , etc , etc ... "

This is probably what one can read in the official history books distributed in all the schools and libraries of the country.

There is again one last thing to complete the true portrait of Stefan Bandera: Stefan Bandera was an anti-Semitic ideologue and a War criminal that had been directly implied in the deportation and mass-murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Ukraine.

One other trick of Bandera’s biographers is to try to persuade their readers that Bandera was not really anti-Semitic. This is, again, perfectly untrue. 

The organization of Bandera had a long history of Jew-hating and pogroms, starting with Petlura. Bandera had been arrested several times in Poland in 1938 and 1939 for burning Jewish properties. 
In 1941, when the Nazi troops arrived in Ukraine, Bandera ordered and participated himself in the murdering of Jews during night in Galicia. Many testimonies detail and prove the abominable acts perpetrated by Bandera and his band: 
For example: in the town of Brody, they murdered savagely at least 20 Jews. In 1945, they killed a polish child, wrapped the body in barbed wire in order to claim that this was the result of a Jewish Ritual murder.

On a larger scale, we can mention, for example, his implication in the termination of the Jews belonging to the city of Boryslav ( Lvov Oblast ):

“The extermination of the Jewish community continued with the execution, at the city slaughterhouse, on February 16–17, 1943, of some 600 women, children, and elderly people. During May–August 1943 the remaining Jews were killed and only some 1,500 slave laborers were temporarily spared. Jews who tried to hide in the forests and in the city itself were mostly caught and killed by the Germans, with the cooperation of local Ukrainians belonging mostly to the bands of Stefan Bandera”
(Aharon Weiss, Encyclopaedia Judaica , 2006)

These are only one of the many examples and evidences about what Bandera and his band did. They actively participated in many mass-murders against Jews, Poles and Ukrainians. The Banderas are reported to have murdered at least 100,000 poles during the war.

Up to 1.6 million of Ukrainians Jews have been killed by the Nazis and their collaborators ( The Shoah in Ukraine by M. Kruglov , editions Brandon and Lower ) . It is hard to say , in Western Ukraine , how much have been killed by the Banderas themselves, how much have been killed by the Nazis and how much have been killed by a joint action.  

The last trick of the revisionist Biographers of Bandera is to claim that, since he was imprisoned from 1942 to 1944, Bandera cannot be hold responsible of the mass-murders performed by his organizations (OUN, OUN-B, UIA) during this period. This argument is absurd. The criminal acts of these people are completely linked with Bandera, with his ideology and with his directives.

It would be too long to detail here the role of Bandera, the precise chronology of events that led to the formation of his organizations, before the invasion of Ukraine, during the occupation of Ukraine by the Nazis and after the end of the Second World War, our article just want to give quick hint about this man and what he really was.

Then, with all these information, you would have to tell to your new Ukrainians friends:
“NO my friends, you're wrong. I know that Bandera was a murderer, a war criminal, an anti-Semitic ideologue, an active collaborationist who wanted a nazified Ukraine. I know that he took part in the repression and slaughtering against Ukrainian partisans and that he directly ordered the deportation and Killing of hundreds of thousands of Jews. I know that this man saved his life only by chance, cowardice , treachery and very opportunistic calculus, and that his being, at last, assassinated by the soviet regime was only mere justice»

But after this, you would have to search again for new Ukrainians friends…


Joseph Litchblau , UKRLAA

66th anniversary of the Liberation of Dachau 28/04, 29/04 and 30/04 2011

Liberation of Dachau in Color brest44
The 29^th of April 1945, at the time of 17:30, the camp of Dachau, suburbs of Munich, Germany, was raided by the U.S troops and liberated...

The camp of Dachau was the first Concentration camp to be built by the Nazi troops. It was the evil model of all the others.

We will celebrate the on 28/04, 29/04 and 30/04 the 66^th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau.

A good article can be found here.

Baruch Fichman

Joseph Litchblau

Ukrlaa

Letter from ADl

We received the following encouraging letter from the ADL - Anti Defamation League . after we posted our open Letter to them .

Dear Mr. Fichman,

Thank you for contacting us.  We do follow events in Ukraine closely and have commented publicly, e.g. on the Bandera "Hero of Ukraine" award, an issue you raised below: http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5714_52
(...)

Please feel free to contact me directly with any concerns about anti-Semitism.  You can send me information in Russian, which I read and speak.

Kind regards,

Andrew Srulevitch
Director of European Affairs
Anti-Defamation League

Answer from Senator Boxer

We just received the following answer from Senator Barabara Boxer from our "open Letter to Jewish Organizations" 

Dear Mr. Baruch:

Thank you for taking the time to write and share your views with me.  Your comments will help me continue to represent you and other Californians to the best of my ability.  Be assured that I will keep your views in mind as the Senate considers legislation on this or similar issues.

If you would like additional information about my work in the U.S. Senate, I invite you to visit my website, http://boxer.senate.gov.  From this site, you can access my statements and press releases about current events and pending legislation, request copies of legislation and government reports, and receive detailed information about the many services that I am privileged to provide for my constituents.  You may also wish to visit http://thomas.loc.gov to track current and past federal legislation.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.  I appreciate hearing from you.

Barbara Boxer

United States Senator

Hag Purim Sameah !

Let me congratulate you with light and joyful Purim.

 

Rivals foes of the jews exists in our time also . That is a pity .

 

There are also people who are making heroes out of jews-killers , who are making heroes with criminals that massively murdered the jews over the whole territory of Ukraine .

 

There are also people who commits antisemitism acts , vandalism against place of memories , etc ...

 

We are fighting against these people , day after day .

 

For more than 5 years , Ukraine was led by antisemitic people , namely the Timochenko-Youschenko governement .

 

Due to all activities to bring down these people ( activities in which I did my part ) , we finally win .

 

But new problems calls us forth .

 

Hag Purim Sameah !

 

 

The president of the Ukrainian League Against Antisemitism

 

Mr Baruch Fichman

uklaa.blogspot.com

Vandalism in the jewish cemetary in Chernivtsi

Joseph Zissels

Entrance of the old Cemetary

Here are proofs and pictures of the acts of vandalism performed against the Jewish cemetary in Chernivtsi . ( pictures with comments )

The Jewish cemetary of Chernivtsi ( Chernowitz ) is a very old and beautiful important place and this is a living book of the history of Jews in Bukovina and a very important place for memories . There are the Jews Soldiers killed during the First World War .


During the Nazi Invasion of Bukovina , 600 Jews were slaughtered in Chernivtsi and after , burried there , at the Brothers Magila ( Братска Могила ) .

There were many monuments ruined at the Chernivtsi Jewish cemetery during the last two months .


Indeed , in 1991 , a crook named Joseph Zissels ( * )  got a very important amount of money from the USA to clean the Jewish cimetary , but what he did was to hire a group of unexperienced people for a very cheap price and they cut the trees with a chainsaw , the trunks fall down on the tombs and the monuments who have therefore being crushed and destroyed  ! 

I wrote to the local newspapers , and on 9/05/1991 , 180 Jewish persons , gathered in the Jewish Cemetary signed my petition to stop this acts of vandalism and I went to the office of the president of Ukraine in Kiev with all data and files in order to complain about these criminals acts .

Police arrested the manager of the group of people who cutted the trees , This man paid the police and he was soon freed of any charge against him .

I went to Israel after this facts , because these people threatened to kill me .

In 2009 and 2010  , vandalism was caused by the fact that the municipality decided - again - to cut the trees and to throw then down on the monuments . This was ordered by the local authorities . Such cases did repeat themselves a year ago , and many monuments were destroyed in the Jewish cemetery , again by cutting the trees . 

Acts of Vandalism

In 1994 , there were also such cases and again many monuments were destroyed . 

For some times , the local authorities ceased cutting trees , but some times after they restarted . They were doing it under the pretext of "cleaning the territory" of the cemetery .But these were vandalist actions that they had done . Indeed , many monuments were damaged and destroyed , from the entrance of the cemetery to the right area , there are tombs of former influential Jewish people from Chernivtsi at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . 


Every years , for more than 20 years , many vandalism actions are being done , some tombs are being opened by criminals  , there are many acts of  desecration of graves . The skeleton of dead jewishes  are being desecrated by people who try to stole gold tooth !!!  Nobody moves , the police does not take actions nor wish to investigate against the authors of such crimes ! ( While In Europe , for example , these crimes are severely punished ) .

Desecration

Many Jewish Poets , Writers ,  Lawyers , Rabbis , Doctors , Mayors , Scientist , Professors , ... are buried there . For example : the Yiddish poet and author Eliezer Steinbarg , the politicians and public activists Josef Steiner and Saul Leib Steinmetz , the prominent public activist and leader of the Jewish community Benno Straucher, the head of the Chernivtsi chamber of lawyers and renown politician Max Fokschaner; as well as philanthropists Anna and Markus Kislinger; politician and deputy of Austrian parliament David Tittinger , ...
.

There are also currently many poets , journalists , parliament members of Israel that come from Chernivtsi ( where they were born ) . There are many Jewish people that come from Chenivtsi in the USA , in Canada , in Great Britain . 

We ask to cease the vandalism actions and to punish those who are guilty .

Baruch Fichman 

Degradations in the Chernivtsi Jewish Cemetary , pictures .

here are proofs and pictures of the acts of vandalism performed against the Jewish cemetary in Chernivtsi . 



( * ) This scandalous person is unfortunatly Jew  - he is the president of Ukraine's Jewish umbrella group, the Vaad . This man is appointed  by the authorities to make people believe that Antisemitism does not exist in Ukraine !

N.B 4/7/2011 : It has to be noticed that groups of youngs volunteers from all over the world  ( U.S.A  , Germany , Holland ... ) have cleaned and restored ( as they could )  the tombs in 2007 and 2009 . Many photos we took were anterior to this date . First , it is clear that the young volunteers were not aware that the situation of the Cemetery was due to repeated acts of anti-Semitic degradations. Second, it was a manipulation from the Ukrainian authorities in order to cover up the proofs of these scandalous and outrageous degradations .They asked these young people to restore the destroyed tombs in order to make people believe that the Jews were not taking care of their cemetery but that, on the opposite, the Ukrainians were calling volunteers to restore this cemetary! (This is a strategy that proceeds by confusion). These degradations may repeat again and again until actions are taken against the criminals who perform these acts  of vandalisms . Nevertheless, despite the restorations, many tombs have disappeared and it is not the same cemetery that it was before. The photos we have taken prove what Anti-Semitism in Ukraine is really.