Anti-Semitic manifestations in Ukraine are often connected with the activity of representatives of the Ukrainian Diaspora. Namely they often appear authors or sponsors of anti-Jewish articles and editions. This phenomenon is, probably, connected with the fact that some businessmen try to use anti-Semitism in a competitive struggle. Obviously, due to this reason an entrepreneur from Philadelphia Pyotr Ruban early in 1990s became a regular author and member of the editorial board of national chauvinistic newspaper "Nezboryma natsiya" ("Invincible nation"). Delivering lectures in the town of Lubny, the Poltava region, Ruban asserted Yidomasons are masters in Ukraine and they allegedly try to "seize Ukrainian lands". The lecturer form Philadelphia said all conditions for this have been created by the "leader of the Yid party Kravchuk". The Americans Tatyana Tur and Miroslav Drahan actively try to deny the Holocaust tragedy, which the "Vecherny Kiev" newspaper repeatedly wrote about being at the time in quite an agreement with them.
Pathological anti-Semitism is demonstrated by a Canadian Yosyp Terelya who published his opuses and anti-Semitic caricatures in the Kharkov newspaper "New Ukraine", magazine "Monarchy in Ukraine", brochure "Kingdom of spirit" (Uzhgorod 1994) and other editions. The same "VK" published the article by another Canadian K.Lisyuk "West kept silence of famine in Ukraine" accusing Jews in organizing the famine in Ukraine. An Australian G.Kononenko in his article "Nation and hares" blames non-natives for all troubles in Ukraine. A former shooter of the "Galichina" SS division O.Fedik tried to acquit through "VK" the German Nazism and to accuse Jews of the collapse of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
I remember the presentation of the book "Anti-Semitism against Ukraine", when P. Ruban got so hot that he rather threateningly recommended one of the book's authors get out of Ukraine.
An Australian with the pseudonym Y.Borets also demonstrated a big anti-Semitic activity. Ukraine has seen his book "With the best" containing a number of Black Hundred anti-Jewish accusations. He sponsored an anti-Semitic publication "Memory book of Ukrainians" (Kharkov, 2001), in which the author blames the Russians and Jews for the tragedies of the Ukrainians. The society of the Ukrainian language named after T.Shevchenko (Chicago) financed publishing the brochure by V.Shvarchuk "Grafted branch" (Chernigov, "Prosvita", 1999). It includes notorious accusations by Russian Black Hundred members of the Jews being responsible for the repressions of 1920s - 1930s.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other anti-racist organizations deal with these problems in Europe and the USA. The ADL of Ukraine successfully opposes to anti-Jewish actions, but its cooperation with the analogous structures abroad is little noticeable yet. Nonetheless, we hope our colleagues in other countries will not remain indifferent to the problem of counteracting chauvinism in Ukraine. |