World Affairs Journal: The Jew who was Ukrainian
Alexander J. Motyl Alexander J. Motyl is professor of political science at Rutgers University. He can be reached at ajmotyl@andromeda.rutgers.edu.
The Jew Who Was Ukrainian is a blackly comedic, anti-historical, and absurdist novel about a tortured Jewish-Ukrainian man who struggles vainly to find meaning at the intersection of Hitler’s Holocaust and Stalin’s Gulag. The hero of this preposterous story is Volodymyr Frauenzimmer, a man with a preposterous name and a preposterous past. His Ukrainian mother was a Nazi concentration camp guard and hates Jews. His Jewish father was a Stalinist butcher and hates Ukrainians. Poor Volodymyr doesn’t know how to cope with his dreadful past until he discovers the redeeming power of hatred and resolves to kill the Exceptionally Great Leader of Mother Russia—the fish-eyed Pitoon, a half-Russian, half-German dictator whose name happens to “rhyme with spittoon.” Read the story here.
