Josef Zissels : “Putin is sending us a Trojan horse”

For a number of years, Ukrainian civil society has been protesting towards the “Russian” challenge of a memorial at Babi Yar, a spot of Holocaust remembrance, as a result of the concept of this memorial belongs to a few Russian billionaires intently linked to Vladimir Putin. However the challenge has obtained the approval of the present Ukrainian administration, and the Basis set as much as help it has well-known figures on its varied boards. The billionaires have put $100 million on the desk, whereas the two-part Ukrainian challenge (Babi Yar Museum and Shoah Memorial), which is essentially supported by civil society, is struggling to acquire funding. Because the eightieth anniversary of the Babi Yar bloodbath (September 29-30, 1941) approaches, Josef Zissels, former dissident and Soviet political prisoner, co-chairman of the Vaad (Union of Jewish Communities in Ukraine), explains why he opposes the “Russian” challenge.

Interview by Galia Ackerman

There’s loads of controversy surrounding the challenge to commemorate the Babi Yar tragedy. Remind our readers what Babi Yar is.

It’s a massive space in a suburb of Kyiv. There are deep ravines, which makes it inconceivable to construct or plant crops. The land round it was purchased by spiritual communities to create cemeteries. On the finish of the 19^th century and the start of the 20^th century, there have been already 4 cemeteries: Orthodox, Jewish, Karaite and Muslim.

The historical past of Babi Yar, reconstructed by the working group of the Institute of Historical past of Ukraine, should be written from the center of the 19^th century. There are indications that mass executions came about in Babi Yar through the Civil struggle and through the Stalinist repressions. Victims of the Holodomor have been additionally buried there. However probably the most tragic episode on this historical past is undoubtedly the Holocaust.

What occurred on September 29 and 30, 1941?

The Germans entered Kyiv on September 19, 1941. A number of days later, mines positioned by retreating Soviet troops exploded in Khreshchatyk, the principle avenue of town. Many buildings have been destroyed. There have been casualties amongst each the Nazi occupiers and the civilian inhabitants. In response, the Nazis took repressive measures towards the inhabitants of Kyiv, particularly towards the Jews. On September 28, the German administration ordered the Jews of Kyiv to assemble the subsequent day, on the eve of Yom Kippur. Two German police battalions led columns to Babi Yar. There have been few males, as nearly all of them had left for the entrance. There have been largely outdated individuals, kids and girls. The direct executor of the shootings was the Sonderkommando 4A, composed of the SS males whose names are recognized. This identical Kommando shot the Jewish inhabitants in different cities earlier than and after Babi Yar. For instance, in August 1941, the Nazis shot 25,000 Jews, largely Hungarian Jews deported from Hungary, within the Kamenets-Podolski space.

The executions by taking pictures started on the twenty ninth and continued on September 30. Individuals have been taken to the sting of some ravines, and there SS officers from Sonderkommando 4A pressured them to undress, earlier than taking pictures them with machine weapons and computerized rifles. In two days, 34,000 Jews from Kyiv have been shot.

Later, this place was used for different executions. In the course of the two years of occupation, no less than 100,000 individuals have been killed in Babi Yar. Of those, two-thirds have been Jews. Among the many non-Jewish victims have been Soviet prisoners of struggle, Gypsies and the mentally unwell. There have been additionally greater than 600 Ukrainian nationalists who initially collaborated with the Germans, however quickly turned disillusioned: the Germans had no intention of serving to them create an impartial Ukrainian state. They went over to the resistance, and plenty of have been shot by the Nazis in January and February 1942.

After the arrival of the Soviet military in Kyiv in November 1943, a rare fee of inquiry into Nazi crimes was organized, however no emphasis was positioned on the ethnic origins of the victims: they have been Soviet residents. In 1946, the well-known Kyiv trial came about and Germans who had participated within the executions, in addition to members of the native auxiliary police, have been convicted and shot.

How come there are two initiatives to create a memorial at Babi Yar?

For the sake of simplicity and accuracy, we name these two initiatives “Russian” and “Ukrainian”. The thought for the Ukrainian challenge emerged in 2015, when a State Committee was created tasked with organizing occasions to commemorate the seventy fifth anniversary of the Babi Yar bloodbath. This Committee began engaged on the challenge of a memorial.

Nevertheless, in early 2016, Pavel Fuks, a Russian billionaire from Kharkiv, arrived in Kyiv from Russia. Representatives of the Russian challenge consult with him as a “Ukrainian Jew”; in actuality, he made all his cash in Russia, which defines his identification. He got here on behalf of two different Russian billionaires who even have roots in Ukraine — Mikhail Fridman and Guerman Khan. Fuks met with me in February 2016 and requested me to help their challenge. He mentioned their trio was prepared to present $100 million to create the perfect museum on the earth, a lot better than the Holocaust Museum in Washington and Yad Vashem. As a citizen of Ukraine and a Ukrainian Jew, I instantly refused.

To start with, I informed him that the piece of land in Babi Yar the place they need to construct is a Jewish cemetery, and it’s forbidden to construct on a Jewish (or some other) cemetery. He was not ready to speak about this concern, as he knew nothing about Jewish traditions. Second, I requested a easy query. What’s Putin’s curiosity in permitting three billionaires near him to speculate $100 million in a memorial challenge in Ukraine, whereas he’s waging struggle towards that nation? He was not ready to reply this query both.

What’s the basic distinction between the 2 initiatives?

Every nation has its personal tradition and its personal politics of reminiscence. We see the Russian challenge as a spinoff of the reminiscence coverage of imperial Russia, which has at its core the good victory within the Second World Conflict. The narrative of the Russian challenge is constructed in accordance with the politics of reminiscence: specifically, it makes use of the notion of “Soviet individuals”, which has not existed for 30 years.

However Ukraine doesn’t need to work with this notion. It has its personal historical past since 1991, when the impartial Ukrainian state was created. The earlier historical past of Ukrainians is a colonial historical past in several empires: Polish-Lithuanian, Austro-Hungarian and particularly Russian.

The Ukrainian challenge begins from the Ukrainian standpoint on the historical past of this nation, on the colonial historical past of the Soviet interval, on anti-Semitism: it takes under consideration the historical past of European anti-Semitism and the historical past of Nazism, and so forth. That’s, it makes use of fashionable Western methodology.

Normally, all recognized ideas of Holocaust museums on the earth are primarily based on the historical past of anti-Semitism in Europe. It’s inside this framework that the historical past of Nazism and its visceral and radical anti-Semitism, which ends with the Holocaust, is studied. However there’s virtually nothing within the Russian narrative in regards to the complicated historical past of European anti-Semitism.

Additionally lacking is an important a part of the Ukrainian narrative: the Soviet historical past of the Ukrainian territory that was occupied by the Pink Military in 1918. From then on, a brand new interval of colonial historical past begins. There’s hardly any historical past of those twenty pre-war years within the Russian narrative. There’s speak of the cult of character, of repression, however this isn’t sufficient.

And with out it, it’s inconceivable to clarify why there have been so many prisoners of struggle – as much as 5 million (not one of the nations conquered by Hitler had proportionally so many prisoners of struggle), to clarify why some Soviet inhabitants and prisoners of struggle collaborated with the occupiers. A lot of them hated the Soviet regime due to its crimes: its purges and its synthetic famine. After all, there have been collaborationists in all nations, however within the case of the Soviet regime, it is a particular state of affairs that must be clarified.

The mentality of those individuals was shaped beneath the affect of ruthless repression and false Soviet propaganda. They have been taught to show their backs when their kinfolk, neighbors or co-workers have been arrested, as a result of everybody might be subsequent. They have been taught to write down denunciations. All that is absent from the Russian narrative. In different phrases, there’s nothing in it to clarify why the native inhabitants in some instances cooperated with the occupiers — not simply administratively or by preventing with the Soviet military, however by taking part in repressions towards civilians, particularly Jews.

One other level. The Russian narrative works with a picture of concentric circles that diverge from one level, that of Babi Yar. This unimaginable picture was not invented by probability. The middle is Babi Yar. Not Berlin, not Germany! As a result of this story conveys a comparatively new picture — the Holocaust by bullets — and limits itself to it. That there was Kristallnacht, that there have been Auschwitz and different focus and extermination camps, that the Nazis gassed hundreds of thousands of Jews — that’s irrelevant. What issues is that the Soviet individuals have been victims of the Holocaust by taking pictures, which started at Babi Yar.

This too is a lie. I used to be in Przemyśl, Poland, the place the Germans entered in 1939 as a part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. I used to be on the cemetery, in entrance of the mass grave of the Jews of Przemyśl, who have been shot in 1939, two years earlier than the second when, based on them, the Holocaust started. However the Russian narrative insists on Ukrainian duty, that’s the level!

Then, ranging from the Babi Yar bloodbath, which they think about the epicenter of the Holocaust, concentric circles unfold over the entire of Kyiv, then over the Kyiv area, then over different areas of Ukraine, then over elements of Russia, Moldavia, Belarus, then over Jap and Central Europe. That’s, this picture gives the look that the Holocaust didn’t unfold from Germany, however from Babi Yar.

In different phrases, the Holocaust was born in Ukraine.

It is a very unusual image. And Ukrainian historians have criticized them quite a bit for that. I criticized them for that too, after I attended the hearings of this idea.

The scientists who labored on the Russian challenge are usually not ignorant. However they have been paid some huge cash to supply the narrative desired by the Kremlin. Nevertheless, after two years, every part fell aside, the unique workforce left, slamming the door. The top of that analysis workforce, Karl Berkhof, a Dutch professor and world-renowned knowledgeable on the Holocaust, declared that he wouldn’t take part within the creation of Disneyland.

So far as I do know, Berkhof left due to Ilia Khrzhanovsky.

That apparently was the final straw. In 2019, some drafts of the Russian challenge have been printed, which brought about a storm of indignation in Ukraine. On this museum, psychological experiments have been to be carried out: guests have been to be provided to take part in a macabre role-playing recreation to be within the place of the executioner and within the place of the sufferer. And this made many individuals offended.

The writer of those concepts is Ilia Khrzhanovsky, who was appointed creative director of the Russian challenge in 2019. He’s a Russian filmmaker who just lately made a fourteen-part movie, DAU, and whose 2019 exhibition-performance in Paris with the identical title had a combined reception.

After his appointment, the scandals started instantly. 500 intellectuals and cultural figures signed a letter to the chairman of the supervisory board, Natan Shcharansky, demanding Khrjanovsky’s elimination, however received no response.

Nevertheless, the true drawback just isn’t Khrzhanovsky. What do I care who instructions the Russian forces within the Donbass — Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov or Khrzhanovsky? What issues to me is that Putin and his gang geared up, financed, armed and despatched them to kill Ukrainian residents. Khrzhanovsky doesn’t trouble me. He’s already the third or fourth director. If he leaves, there shall be one other one. The order will nonetheless be fulfilled — the one from Russia.

Nevertheless, the arrival of Khrzhanovsky appears to have strengthened the place of the opponents of the Russian challenge.

Pavel Fuks felt that there was resistance in 2016. Along with me, he met with Ukrainian historian Vitali Nakhmanovich, in addition to Anatoly Podolsky, director of the Holocaust Historical past Analysis Heart, they usually have been additionally against participation within the challenge.

This alerted the Russians, and the troika (Fuks, Fridman, and Khan) started to construct its defenses by luring well-known figures into the challenge. These individuals are like crooked gamblers, at all times dishonest and mendacity. In reality, the lion’s share of the $100 million comes from Russia. Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk, boxer Vladimir Klitchko and American billionaire Ronald Lauder are there to make up the numbers, whereas their donations are usually not vital. A complete construction was created — a basis with a tutorial council, a public relations council, a supervisory board. Well-known personalities have been invited to take part in these boards: Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Joschka Fischer, Joe Lieberman, Irina Bokova, Svetlana Alexievitch. In spite of everything, the trigger appears noble… And behind the backs of those worthy individuals, scandalous issues are occurring.

How is the Russian challenge progressing?

It has been six years because it was launched. There’s nonetheless no articulated idea. There is no such thing as a museum challenge, there is no such thing as a memorial challenge. They’re doing installations, shopping for ready-made initiatives in several nations. They’ve already spent $25 million virtually on public relations: each set up is accompanied by an enormous publicity marketing campaign.

Why do they want public relations?

Putin has an goal: to defame Ukrainians, to name them anti-Semites, nationalists, Nazis, to say that Ukraine doesn’t deserve any state, that it isn’t mandatory to assist it, that Russians will handle it… Billionaires Friedman and Khan, alternatively, have a special motive for investing cash. They want PR as a result of they’ve been on the U.S. Treasury listing (the so-called Kremlin listing) since 2018 as individuals near Putin who might be affected by sanctions. Quite a few individuals on that listing have already been topic to U.S. sanctions — for instance, [billionaires] Vekselberg, Deripaska and others. And really just lately Fuks fell beneath the sanctions!

Why is Putin so within the topic of the Holocaust?

First, due to the good victory. The Russian regime is making an attempt to outline the foundations of a brand new imperial ideology. It is necessary for Putin to boast in regards to the victory within the Second World Conflict and to remind Europe specifically to whom it owes a debt.

Second, Putin is obsessive about reassembling the fragments of the Soviet Union into a brand new empire. He’s delusional about this, it’s his paranoia. Years in the past he mentioned that the best geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century was the collapse of the us. For all of us it was a cheerful occasion, however for him it was a disaster. And he desires to rebuild the us, which is inconceivable with an impartial Ukraine. These are phantom pains, like an amputated arm or leg. However you may’t glue an amputated limb again collectively. Regardless of how a lot the Kremlin desires and plots, nothing will assist them, despite their cash, army drive and propaganda. Ukraine won’t ever be with Russia once more.

Can Fridman, Khan and Fuks be accused of being anti-Ukrainian?

For them, it’s simply enterprise. On the one hand, they need to clear their picture in entrance of the Individuals. Alternatively, they’re Putin’s henchmen, his servants. They don’t have any proper to disobey him, in any other case he’ll destroy them as he destroyed Mikhail Khodorkovsky who remained in jail for ten years. By the best way, the Alfa group headed by Fridman and Khan is financing a program to convey younger diplomats, politicians and journalists from all around the world to Russia to recruit brokers of affect amongst them.

Are they recognized for his or her anti-Ukrainian views? That’s not the query. In spite of everything, they lend cash to the army trade in Russia. For instance, Uralvagonzavod within the Urals is a manufacturing facility that makes and repairs tanks. Thus, tanks hit by Ukrainian military fireplace in Donbass are taken there, repaired and despatched again to the entrance. And Alfa Financial institution lends cash to this manufacturing facility. So I ask you: what nation at struggle would permit its enemy to construct a memorial for it? For me, it’s clear: Putin is sending us a Computer virus.

Nevertheless, the Russian challenge has managed to mobilize numerous well-known individuals. Do you’ve help within the Jewish world and within the Western world?

The issue just isn’t that there’s competitors between the 2 initiatives. That is an absurd standpoint. The Russian challenge is a part of a hybrid struggle of Russia towards Ukraine. We should perceive this!

The Ukrainian challenge is growing. Eighteen famend researchers have created an excellent idea. This idea has already been examined in Ukraine, and by dozens of consultants around the globe, modifications have been proposed and mentioned, that’s, the challenge is following the right scientific path. We don’t promote just like the Russians, however do a critical scientific work. As soon as this work is completed, we’ll search for help.

How do the Ukrainian authorities take care of this case?

In reality, this challenge was commissioned by the earlier authorities in 2017, beneath the presidency of Piotr Poroshenko. In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky got here to energy, and the angle of the brand new authorities has modified. Final 12 months, in Could, 750 celebrities — heroes of Ukraine, scientists, teachers, writers — signed a letter to Zelensky asking him to concentrate to the Ukrainian challenge. He didn’t even learn this letter.

Is it for ideological causes?

He has no ideological causes. He doesn’t perceive something, not solely this, however many different issues.

So what are your possibilities to forestall the implementation of the Russian challenge?

Who says it is going to be carried out? I’ve been satisfied for a number of years that they don’t need to create something, in any other case this memorial would have been constructed already. They want public relations. They promote each set up. This troika is supported and directed by Putin and his gang – Vladislav Surkov, Dmitri Kozak and others – who’re all overseeing the struggle towards Ukraine. Fridman and Surkov have been associates since faculty, they studied collectively and Surkov labored for Alfa Group. They’re upsetting us, Ukraine, to ban their challenge. Then Putin will rub his arms and say: we’ve at all times mentioned that Ukrainians are anti-Semites.

The territory of Babi Yar was allegedly given on a long-term lease to this Russian challenge. Is that this actually the case?

No, it isn’t. They’re making an attempt to do it, but it surely can’t be performed legally. This space is a nature reserve. Reserves can’t be leased. They need to take over the constructing, which is a part of the Ukrainian challenge: the state has already spent 30 million hryvnias for its reconstruction. There was once an workplace of the Jewish cemetery there, and it was deliberate to make it a memorial for the victims of the Babi Yar.

Because the authorities is now supporting the Russian challenge, it’s withholding cash and never permitting the reconstruction of the constructing in query to be accomplished. The Russians are on the lookout for authorized tips to take over this architectural monument. Legally, it’s inconceivable.

In reality, I’m not afraid of the evolution of this challenge. As a result of I’m positive that Ukraine will win this hybrid struggle. Russians will withdraw from in all places, they may even withdraw from Babi Yar. And our guides will give excursions and present their services as trophies of the hybrid struggle carried out by Russia towards Ukraine.

The Public Relations Council supporting the Russian challenge consists of actors, bankers, journalists…

They act skillfully, however it’s all a lie. They lure everybody with cash, advantages. They’ve some huge cash. And a few individuals need to generate profits alongside the best way, not believing that this challenge will see the sunshine of day. However the civil society is towards this challenge. There are literally thousands of signatures of Ukrainian Jewish and non-Jewish celebrities — writers, administrators, teachers — towards the Russian challenge and in favor of the Ukrainian challenge.

On the event of the eightieth anniversary, what’s going to occur?

They’re getting ready a type of program, they need to do 100% public relations on this program, two extra services shall be unveiled to the press and diplomats. In Could, they opened a symbolic “memorial” synagogue on the grounds of the Kirilovskoye Orthodox cemetery.

That is only a provocation!

The SBU has despatched two letters to the federal government previously 12 months, stating that this challenge threatens nationwide safety and the picture of Ukraine.

Did you attempt to dissuade well-known individuals from taking part within the Russian challenge?

Some individuals understood my arguments, like Timothy Snyder, a world-renowned historian. I talked to him in 2016 and he refused straight away. However our fundamental activity is to help the Ukrainian challenge, to not break the Russian challenge. It is necessary for us that civil society and all of Ukraine help the Ukrainian challenge.

What’s the position of Viktor Medvedchuk and his occasion [Opposition Platform – For Life] in all this?

He’s a pro-Russian politician, he’s a part of the fifth column. He helps, in fact, the Russian challenge. Vadim Rabinovich, his right-hand man, has earned about 3 million {dollars} from this challenge. In 2006, he created a Babi Yar memorial fund and one way or the other obtained from town the lease on two plots of land with a complete space of seven hectares (2 and 5 hectares). He didn’t know what to do with it. He collected cash (together with from Ihor Kolomoysky), however didn’t construct something. Then he determined to make a revenue once more and bought this fund and the lease to the Russian challenge, by means of Pavel Fuks, for $2.7 million. That was two or three years in the past.

In response to the Russian challenge, there needs to be a museum there?

Sure, the earlier workforce even organized a contest, which was gained by an Austrian challenge. When Khrzhanovsky arrived, this challenge was rejected.

The second plot just isn’t meant for building, it’s a leisure space. And the 2 hectares theoretically appropriate for building are positioned partly on the territory of the Jewish cemetery and partly on that of the Orthodox cemetery. Final fall they opened a facility, “The Mirror Discipline”, on the positioning of the Jewish cemetery, and this spring a synagogue, as I discussed earlier, on the positioning of the Orthodox cemetery.

I used to be shocked by this set up. On the mirrored flooring, columns pierced with 100,000 bullets to represent the variety of individuals exterminated at Babi Yar. And to fireplace these hundred thousand bullets, they invited Ukrainian troopers. That is nonetheless a provocation: it’s as if Ukrainian troopers have been taking pictures once more at 100,000 victims of the Nazis.

« The Mirror Discipline », Babi Yar // Fb web page of the challenge.

I don’t even need to talk about it. The initiators of the Russian challenge don’t have any idea, they construct on the cemeteries, the Jewish and Orthodox, spitting on the legal guidelines of Ukraine. They violate the regulation on cemeteries and on the preservation of cultural heritage, they violate the constructing rules and worldwide treaties of Ukraine. They behave like invaders in our nation, completely ignoring the protests of the civil society, as Putin does in his personal nation.

That is the distinction. The Ukrainian challenge has three fundamental parts. It’s a memorial park of 70 hectares on which nothing shall be constructed. It should merely be developed to include some 40 monuments that exist already at Babi Yar, to make it a spot of remembrance the place one can come to mourn, pray, meditate, and bear in mind one’s family members. Not removed from Babi Yar, the Ukrainian challenge foresees two websites: the Babi Yar Memorial Museum and the Ukrainian Holocaust Museum. This, briefly, is the Ukrainian idea. And no building on the websites of murders and cemeteries, it’s strictly forbidden.

I repeat, the Ukrainian challenge relies on the Ukrainian tradition of reminiscence, which isn’t but absolutely shaped, as a result of western Ukrainians have one reminiscence, jap Ukrainians have one other one, these within the middle a 3rd one, these within the south a fourth one, however a nationwide consensus is step by step growing. Since 1991, when Ukraine turned impartial, the coverage of nationwide reminiscence is step by step taking form.

In any case, we must always not construct on Ukrainian soil objects impressed by the Russian imperial tradition and its coverage of reminiscence. Ukrainians themselves should construct a tradition of reminiscence that’s a part of their identification as a nation.