The pogroms were led by Christian priests with church bells ringing
Denazification of Ukraine and the World
THE PEACE ADVOCATE DECEMBER 2025
by Anatol Zukerman
I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, but lived most of my Soviet life in the Moscow, Russian Federation. My mother was born in Kremenchug, which, like Kharkov, is now in the center of a raging war. She survived Jewish pogroms in imperial Russia, and to the end of her life could not stand church bells tolling, because the pogroms were led by Christian priests with church bells ringing. The Black Hundred, a Russian version of Ku Klux Klan promoted the slogan “Beat the Jews, save Russia!”
In 1918, Ukrainian communists stopped the pogroms and abolished the Pale of Jewish Settlement, but in the United States, “communism” is a dirty word, so bringing up that fact is politically incorrect. Now, most American Jews denounce the Russian revolution that saved their forebears’ lives and shed tears for the murdered Russian Tzar who persecuted them. When I
visited Moscow in the 1990s, antisemitic literature was sold in the streets, which I never saw in the Soviet Union.
When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, I was 3 years old. German troops quickly advanced to the suburbs of Moscow, and its civilian population was evacuated to Siberia. My father went west to fight the Nazis, while my mother, my nanny and I went east beyond the Ural mountains that separate Europe from Asia, which was Hitler’s initial plan to make Europe
“free of Jews.” His hopes were dashed, but Russia lost 27 million people in World War II. President Zelensky’s father ended the war as a colonel in the Red Army and my father was a major.
During the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, 2 million Jews perished in a strategically planned mass murder, and Ukrainian volunteers helped Hitler do that. Stepan Bandera, a current Hero of Ukraine, pledged the allegiance of Ukraine to Adolf Hitler and formed the SS division Galicia that fought against Russia. In 2010, Ukraine President Yushchenko awarded Stepan Bandera the order of Hero of Ukraine posthumously and people celebrated Bandera’s birthday with marches in Nazi uniforms and salutes. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukrainian government has discriminated against the ethnic Russian minority.
In 2014, the Ukrainian army attacked and occupied the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics which wished to secede from Ukraine. In 2018, the Russian language was banned in schools and governmental institutions. In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in full force. Ukraine’s Azov Division, which fought against Russia, included Neo-Nazi volunteers who came to Ukraine from all over the world. President Zelensky, a Jew, helped to create that military unit. In 2025, President Trump accused Ukraine, not Russia, of starting the current war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it a “proxy war” between Russia and the United States.
President Putin complains about Ukrainian antisemitism and demands “denazification” of Ukraine as a precondition to peace negotiations, but antisemitism is alive and well in his own country. And now President Trump campaigns against antisemitism in the United States. Looks like both leaders found a common ground. Wouldn’t it be nice if they succeed in their endeavor?
https://masspeaceaction.org/news/ukraine-russia/denazification-of-ukraine-and-the-world/2025/12/09/?ms=email-nl-251210&emci=c4856e56-15d5-f011-8195-000d3a1d58aa&emdi=c6dca531-1cd6-f011-8195-000d3a1d58aa&ceid=313935
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