Insensitive

By Askold Lozynskyj

Pinhas Avivi, Deputy Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in charge of relations with Russia, CIS and East European countries, told Itar-Tass, “We regard the “holodomor” as a tragedy, but in no case do we call it genocide. We describe it as the tragedy in which the peoples of Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and of other countries suffered, and we accept Russia’s wording. The Holocaust is the only genocide to us.”

On January 26, within the United Nations Building in New York, Ukraine observed the International Day of Commemoration (in memory of the victims of the Holocaust) in the form of an art exhibit of Holocaust paintings by a Ukrainian-Jewish artist currently residing in the US. In his opening remarks, Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the UN observed that Ukrainians who suffered during the Holodomor feel a deep sense of sympathy with the Jewish people who suffered so greatly in the genocide of the Holocaust. A few weeks earlier, Ukraine’s President honoured the upcoming exhibit’s artist with an award entitled People’s Artist of Ukraine.

The above depict two quite disparate manifestations. In the final analysis, one should not attribute the words of one insensitive Israeli to all his countrymen. Nor should one credit the gestures of one, two or even three Ukrainians to all Ukrainians. Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. However, in this instance Mr. Avivi spoke on behalf of the people of Israel and Ukraine’s UN representative acted on behalf of the people of Ukraine. As a result, there can be only two conclusions – Ukraine sympathizes with the Jewish people and recognizes the Holocaust as genocide while Israel does not recognize the Holodomor as genocide, and considers only the Holocaust as genocide. The last part [also] speaks to the Armenian, Rwandan, Darfurian and other purported genocides.

Pinhas Avivi’s statements are disturbing for several reasons. Most significantly, they manifest a basic lack of human compassion. Additionally, they exhibit a Russia skewed historical perspective and even worse, arrogance on issues of which one is ignorant. Raphael Lemkin, the inspiration and craftsman for the UN 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide spoke in 1953 on the twentieth anniversary of the Holodomor and, unequivocally, characterized it as genocide against the Ukrainian people. Lemkin was also of Jewish descent, but, unfortunately, he was not a spokesman for the Government of Israel.

The last decade has unearthed both in Ukraine and the Russian Federation undeniable archival documentation as corroborative testimony to the allegation of genocide. Collectivization, in 1932-33 in the USSR was aimed undeniably at all peoples, but the resultant famine was exploited by Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich to obliterate the Ukrainian people. Among the newly revealed documents is the formerly purged Census of 1937 which shows that from 1926 to 1937 the Ukrainian population in the USSR declined in actual numbers by five million while the remaining populations of the USSR grew by 17% and Russians by 23%. There is correspondence from Stalin to Kaganovich, his implementer in Ukraine, [stating] “Affairs in Ukraine are in bad hands … there are rotten elements, conscious and unconscious Petlyurivtsi.”(Nationalists). Also, the Stalin-Molotov Decree of January 22, 1933 shut the borders of the Ukrainian SSR and the Kuban region of Russia, densely populated by Ukrainians. No other borders were closed.

Perhaps, worst of all, Mr. Avivi in his own words shares Russia’s historical perspective. At a press conference convened at the UN in New York by the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation on October 29, 2008 to explain the Russian position on the Holodomor, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin specifically delineated two points – firstly, that the famine of 1932-33 was the tragedy of all peoples in the USSR, and secondly, that Ukraine’s attempt to characterize that event as a genocide against the Ukrainian people is an attempt to rewrite history as well as to whitewash the cooperation of Ukrainians with the Nazis during World War II. Ambassador Churkin underlined that the current President of Ukraine in 2007 conferred the honour “Hero of Ukraine” posthumously to Roman Shukhevych, whom Churkin cynically labelled a “Nazi collaborator.” Churkin hurled more disinformation, reprising much of the defamation against Ukrainians used by his Soviet predecessors, i.e. Ukrainians massacred Jews in Babyn Yar, more Jews were killed during World War II in Ukraine and the Baltic countries than anywhere else [etc.] I do not know whether Pinhas Avivi concurs with these aspersions. I do know that Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, attempted to defame Roman Shukhevych by alleging his Nazi collaboration, Embarrassed by a challenge to produce evidence from Ukraine’s Security Service. Yad Vashem’s dossier consisted only of discredited Soviet defamatory material against Shukhevych.

In his remarks, Pinhas Avivi does not rely upon scholarship or expertise of other Israelis and unconscionably denies that the Holodomor was genocide then, arrogantly concludes with “The Holocaust is the only genocide for us,” ignoring the suffering of other peoples under genocidal regimes. Worse, he sides with the oppressor or, in this case, its successor in more ways than one. I suggest that this Israeli spokesman of a people with a history of being oppressed, study the history of other oppressed peoples, learn and discover that the Holodomor was genocide against the Ukrainian people.