The US government, NATO, European Union countries and their pliant media are all suppressing the truth about what is really occurring in Ukraine, just like in Yugoslavia. And they are supporting and using Nazi groups to fulfill geopolitical objectives, something that they have continued to do since the end of the Great Patriotic War (World War II).
It would be understandable if Jews worldwide raised the alarm and took up arms, metaphorically speaking, against the US. However, they are not being informed and the truth is being suppressed. We spoke to Professor Barry Lituchy, the editor and co-author of the book “Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia”. He is also a member of the US-Jewish community and has roots in Ukraine. He spoke about the US support and the continuation of US collusion with Nazis and fascists worldwide.
Hello, this is John Robles, I’m speaking with Professor Barry Lituchy, he is a teacher of history at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York. He is also the co-author of “Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia” analysis and survivor testimony. He is also the founder and President of the Jasenovac Research Foundation and the Vice President of the Holocaust Memorial Committee in Brooklyn, New York.
Robles: Hello Sir, how are you this evening?
Lituchy: I’m very well John, thank you for calling.
Robles: I’d really like to hear your views on the current situation here in Europe and in Ukraine in particular with the holocaust, the rise of fascist movements in Europe, the support by the US government of known Nazi groups in Ukraine and all of this in light of the victory over the Nazis in World War II?
Lituchy: John, the Jews in the United States are very much aware of the rise of anti-Semitism and of neo-Nazism in Europe right now. What they are less aware of though is the connection between US foreign policy and I would say even other EU countries’ foreign policy in helping to promote the rise of this neo-fascist movement that is occurring in numerous countries today in Europe and of course most spectacularly and most unfortunately today in the Ukraine.
I would say that the history of this connection between US foreign policy and other EU countries’ foreign policy in promoting and protecting and also subsidizing neo-fascist movements goes back to the end of World War II when the United States and Britain not only did not send Nazi war criminals for trial in countries like Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, but in fact protected them and with the cooperation of the Vatican and the ratlines out of the Vatican allowed them to escape, and then in fact co-opted them as assets for the CIA and MI-6 intelligence services in the post war/World War II years.
In fact we now know that an enormous budget was created to organize and support the organizations of these fascist movements in the post-war era. So, the truth is that it is not really a revival in places like the Ukraine when we see organizations like the Right Sector and Svoboda, with its neo-Nazi insignias and proclamations but rather a continuation of the past.
Robles: Isn’t this disturbing for Jewish Americans and Jews in general? How do you feel about the fact that the Jewish community in Odessa is preparing evacuation plans currently as we speak? I don’t know if you saw the Jerusalem Post article.
Lituchy: Yes, I did see it and as a matter of fact I think there is a great deal of confusion in the United States among American Jews about this because to a large extent unfortunately the major Jewish organizations have not really, I would say to a large extent, they have either gone along with the mainstream media or have not really sounded a clear alarm about these developments, because to a large extent a lot of the major Jewish organizations want to conform to US foreign policy and so therefore if US foreign policy and the US mainstream media’s policy is to suppress the truth, the historical truth about these fascist movements and their connection to US foreign policy, I think then that is also what the major Jewish organizations are going to do, unfortunately.
But I think there is also a great deal of knowledge about what is going on among many American Jews. So, you will see a very contradictory and differentiated response to these developments.
But historians certainly know what is going on and historians know the trajectory of this and the background to this current evolution of fascist movements in places like the Ukraine and I think that it is really incumbent on them to … it’s important for them to speak out and that is why I am here because it is very important for academics and scholars of the Holocaust to make clear that this is not an accident and it is a very clear danger.
What happened in Odessa recently is a development that in many ways is identical to what occurred in October 1941 when the Romanian army entered Odessa, took Odessa and after an attack on the Romanian high command in Odessa, they basically burned to death across Odessa.
So, it is not surprising that the Right Sector when they came into Odessa a few days ago repeated history. They burned their victims to death. Historians can see that this is not reminiscent. It is identical to what occurred in the Holocaust.
Robles: Those are their heroes and they are trying to emulate the Nazi SS and the Bandera Nazis who were even considered brutal by the SS.
Lituchy: I think that a lot of American Jews, a significant number of American Jews can trace their heritage back to the Ukraine, a place that was home to millions of Jews before World War II and many American Jews like myself have a direct connection to the past history of the Ukrainian fascist movement.
I can tell you from my own family’s experience, we came from a town in the Ukraine, the Lituchys that is, came from a town in the Ukraine called Zhashkov or Zhashkova in Russian, and in 1919 we suffered a terrible pogrom there organized by the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlyura, and the Jews of Zhashkov, or Zhashkova, were rounded up and sent to the Synagogue and others were sent to other buildings, and if they could pay enough in gold, they survived, and if they could not, they were burned to death.
So, this is a family memory and this story was told to me by my grandfather’s sister 30 somewhat years ago when I was young and it is something that everyone in my family knows because we never returned to our homes in that town after that pogrom and many, many, many Jews in that town were burned alive, killed, including two of my grandfather’s cousins who were shot even though we paid Petlyura’s boys the ransom that they wanted.
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