The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on Wednesday stated that Ukraine strongly condemns all forms of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and said authorities at all levels are making efforts to combat their manifestations.
The announcement followed Israel’s foreign ministry’s condemnation of the celebration in Ukraine of ideologists from the Ukrainian National Movement, who were responsible for the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry attested that “preservation of the historical truth about the Holocaust tragedy in Ukraine, restoration of the historical justice, including towards those who had fought for the independence of our country and whose memory had been disgraced by the Soviet propaganda, will remain the important goal of Ukraine’s state policy.”
In other words, there were Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, and then there were Ukrainian freedom fighters the Soviets dubbed as Nazi collaborators.
The entire propaganda effort has to do with a crowd of some 1,000 Ukrainian nationalists who marched carrying torches in a procession honoring the January 1 birthday of Stepan Bandera, the head of a militant wing of the Ukrainian independence movement, and a leader and ideologue of Ukrainian nationalists, who collaborated with the Nazis.
According to the Soviet Union…
(See: 1000 in Torchlight March in Kiev Honoring Nazi Collaborator)
The Ukrainian foreign ministry reiterated that “civilized nations should be guided by the principle of commemoration of all the perished, and the discussions in this sphere should be conducted at the level of experts and historians, and not politicians.”
Well put.
Bandera died in 1959, and in January 2010, the outgoing President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, awarded him the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine.
Nuff said.