Earlier this year, more than 50 members of US Congress issued an open letter demanding American pressure on Ukraine in response to recent “incidents of state-sponsored Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.” The lawmakers called on Kyiv to “unequivocally reject Holocaust distortion and the honoring of Nazi collaborators and fully prosecute anti-Semitic crimes,” a claim rejected as “a mix of incompetence and deliberate distortion of information” by Ukrainian memory czar Volodymyr Viatrovych.
In a previous analysis, Sam Sokol briefly touched on Ukraine’s efforts to rehabilitate its wartime nationalist movements – many of whose members had been involved in the ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews. This campaign, a throwback to the memory policies of President Viktor Yushchenko, was strongly supported by the country’s post-Maidan political leadership and made ideal fodder for Russian propaganda, which sought to portray Ukraine as a hotbed of fascism and anti-Semitism.
