Ukrainian Collaboration in the Holocaust

        

Commentary by Dr. Gerhard Falk

        

Ukrainians

On three days in 1941, starting on September 29, German “Einsatzgruppen” and Ukrainian volunteers called Auxiliary Police murdered more than 33,000 Jews at a ravine called Babi Yar. This was the greatest slaughter of Jews the Germans and Ukrainians performed up to that time.

As soon as the German Army had overrun the Ukraine, the “Einsatzgruppen” followed them. The word “Einsatz” means “dedication crew,” so that the Einsatzgruppen were killers dedicated to murdering Jews. The Ukrainians had persecuted Jews for centuries and were ready to do it again with German efficiency. They constituted an Auxiliary Police, which first told the Germans where Jews were living. The Germans, together with the Ukrainians, then broke into Jewish homes and shot and killed the unarmed Jews. Even sick people and little children were murdered. The rationale for killing Jewish children was that children would grow into adults, who would then have to be murdered. Therefore it made sense to kill the children at once. To do so, the Einsatzgruppen threw Jewish babies out of the third floor of a maternity ward, so that these newborn babies fractured their little skulls on the pavement below.

Ukrainian men also formed an SS Division. SS is an abbreviation of Schutzstaffel, meaning protection division. These SS men wore a cap with a death’s head icon at the front. They ran the death camps where millions of Jews were gassed and otherwise killed. There were also contingents of Ukrainian SS who fought with the Germans at the front in Russia. In sum, the Ukrainians were and are Nazis.

In 2019, a Jew was elected president of Ukraine This seems strange in view of the history of persecution Jews suffered in Ukraine. However, it is Nazi doctrine that “the Jews” control Russia, so that a Jewish president, Zelensky, can influence the Russians in favor of the Ukraine.

Shalom u'vracha.

 Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including The American Jewish Community in the 20th and 21st Century (2021).

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