Decoding “de-Nazification” in Ukraine and other his-stories

“In five or 10 years’ time, there’ll probably be a museum dedicated to what’s happening in Ukraine. What will be in that museum? Will it be a genocide museum? Will it be a museum of war?”

David Deutsch, the section head of the Asia and Africa Section at the International School for Holocaust Studies, raised this question during the Limmud Johannesburg panel discussion titled “De-Nazification? – the Ukraine crisis in a historical and contemporary perspective.” He was emphasising that in most cases of genocide, such as the Holocaust, history doesn’t accurately shape what occurred.

Inaccurate information – such as Russia claiming to have invaded Ukraine to “prevent a genocide” and “de-nazify” the country – is being reported about the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, said some of the panellists. They believe this can be addressed through education.

“As people from education institutions, we need to empower others with knowledge,” said Tali Nates, the founder and director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.

When people ask, “How large is the right-wing in Ukraine?” or “Are Nazis in the Parliament,” Nates said they needed to be given the facts. “In Ukraine, right-wing political parties are supported by less than 1% of the people and aren’t even represented in Parliament. Ukraine has a law that Nazi symbols and antisemitism aren’t permitted. When you speak about another country as Nazis, you need to understand it in an educational setting.”

The term genocide, Ukrainian ambassador to South Africa Liubov Abravitova said, stems back to 1944 when Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin used it, in part to describe the Nazis’ systematic murder of Jews during the Holocaust. “He spoke about acts that include killings, causing serious harm to a certain group, making living conditions impossible, or forcibly transferring children to another group. Basically, that’s exactly what’s happening today in Ukraine.”

While a word itself is important, the intention behind it needs to be looked at even more closely, said Deutsch. “As sensitive listeners, we can be very clear if that word is used to justify violence, express pain, or stop the violence. I’m not the judge of our people using that word rightly or wrongly. However, I do think that as sensitive listeners of international politics, we can look if that word is used to justify an unjust, violent act, or used to minimise violence.”

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) perceived the Holocaust differently to the West, said Roni Mikel-Arieli, a historian interested in the intersections between Holocaust memory, Jewish history, and African studies. “The USSR saw the Holocaust as part of the Great Patriotic War. It actually didn’t see Jews as unique victims of the Holocaust. It claimed that the Jews were persecuted because they were Communist and were part of the war against fascism.”

Nates spoke about how people throw a term around loosely. “People say ‘never again’. After the war in 1945, it was ‘never again’. Nelson Mandela said, ‘Never again will our people suffer injustice.’ These words are still used in every commemoration. Yet, on 24 February 2022, [the Ukraine] crisis started. So, ‘never again’ is ‘never again until the next time’.”

Abravitova said the world’s struggle today is the struggle for values that unite everyone. “If we’re agreeing that it’s okay to violate those values, we’ll find ourselves in a completely different world. If you ask me, ‘Is the world united enough? Could the crisis have been prevented?’ I would say that if the world had been unanimously in support of Ukraine in 2014, we wouldn’t have had this [situation]. Since 2014, thousands of people in Ukraine have been killed, and more than a million internally displaced.”

Moreover, “For years, Russia has been trying to take away our culture and language in Ukraine,” said Abravitova. “It has been happening for 300 years. We have been resistant for that many years. This is why we have been so resistant during the current crisis.”