Ukrainian Collaboration in the Holocaust |
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). |