Replies

"On the eve of World War II, Ukraine was home to one the largest Jewish communities in Europe, with estimates as high as 2.7 million, a remarkable number considering the territory’s long record of antisemitism and pogroms. By the end, more than half would perish. When German troops took control of Kyiv in 1941, they were welcomed by “Heil Hitler” banners. Soon after, nearly 34,000 Jews — along with Roma and other “undesirables” — were rounded up and marched to fields outside the city on the pretext of resettlement only to be massacred in what became known as the “Holocaust by bullets.” The Babyn Yar ravine continued to fill up as a mass grave for two years. With as many as 100,000 murdered there, it became one of the largest single killing sites of the Holocaust outside of Auschwitz and other death camps. Researchers have noted the key role locals played in fulfilling Nazi kill orders at the site."

Hitler's willing executioners

This helps explain Ukraine's current "Nazi Problem."

Actually, Russia has the current Nazi problem.

HELPFUL FACTS:

“The surprise German invasion of the U.S.S.R. began on June 22, 1941. The Soviets, during their hasty retreat, shot their political prisoners and, whenever possible, evacuated personnel, dismantled and removed industrial plants, and conducted a scorched-earth policy—blowing up buildings and installations, destroying crops and food reserves, and flooding mines. Almost four million people were evacuated east of the Urals for the duration of the war.

The Germans moved swiftly, however, and by the end of November VIRTUALLY ALL OF UKRAINE WAS UNDER NAZI CONTROL.
There had long been a widespread belief that Germany, as the avowed enemy of Poland and the U.S.S.R., was the Ukrainians’ natural ally for the attainment of their independence.

The illusion was quickly shattered.

In the occupied territories, the Nazis sought to implement their “racial” policies. In the fall of 1941 began the mass killings of Jews that continued through 1944. An estimated 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews perished.

NOTE: Ukraine rates the 4th in the number of people recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” for saving Jews during the Holocaust.

The history of the Jews in Ukraine goes back over a thousand years. Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus’ (late 9th to mid-13th century).

Some of the most important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, rose either fully or to an extensive degree in the territory of modern Ukraine.

According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes the third-largest in Europe and the fifth-largest in the world.

In the Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917-1920), Yiddish was declared a state language, along with Ukrainian and Russian. At that time, the Jewish National Union was created and the community was granted an autonomous status.

Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency in this same period, between 1917 and 1920. Before World War II, slightly less than one-third of Ukraine’s urban population consisted of Jews; they were the largest national minority in Ukraine.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Nazi-occupation-of-Soviet-Ukraine