Ukrainian city honors Nazi collaborator who applauded Holocaust
The Ukrainian city of Rivne has celebrated the 120th birthday of Nazi collaborator and prominent anti-Semitic propagandist Ulas Samchuk, who welcomed the mass killings of Jews during World War II.
Russia has consistently claimed that the current Ukrainian leadership has been embracing neo-Nazi ideology and whitewashing known WWII-era collaborators. When the conflict between Moscow and Kiev escalated into open hostilities in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin named the 'denazification' of Ukraine as one of the objectives of his special operation.
On Thursday, regional officials in Rivne held a ceremony to commemorate Samchuk, who was born in the area, presenting a book: 'Ulas Samchuk - Warrior of the Word.' According to local media, it includes personal letters he wrote and is part of a wider project to include his works in the school curriculum across Ukraine.
The publications described him as a writer, a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the editor of the 'Volyn' newspaper during World War II.
In 2019, the Israeli embassy in Ukraine asked the country's parliament to remove Samchuk from its 'List of Heroes,' describing him as among those who 'oversaw massacres of Jews or supported the Nazi regime.'
In an article last September, the Russian Foreign Ministry characterized Samchuk as a 'Nazi writer and member of the Nazi organizations,' who 'published articles calling for killing Jews.'
This description echoes the assessments of the head of Ukraine's Jewish Committee as well as some Ukrainian historians, who have pointed out that in his newspaper, Samchuk routinely wrote about 'Jewish chimpanzees' and the need to cleanse the country of Jews and Poles.
Samchuk reportedly welcomed the news of Nazi German troops rounding up Kiev's Jews and subsequently massacring them at the infamous Babi Yar ravine as a 'great day' when the 'German authorities [met] the fervent wishes of Ukrainians.'
In nearby Lviv, a Hanukkah menorah installed in memory of local Jews murdered by the Nazis was vandalized in early January, as nationalists celebrated the birthday of prominent World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.
A month before, Kiev authorities had renamed a street after another Nazi collaborator who had aided the Germans in massacring the Jews of Zhitomir Region, Taras Borovets.
Holocaust scholar Marta Gavryshko denounced the decision as a 'symptom of a troubling phenomenon' of Ukraine making the 'regional cult of nationalistic heroes who collaborated with Nazis in the Holocaust' national policy.
According to Russian estimates, approximately 1.5 million Jews perished during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.
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