Ukraine to honor groups that killed Jews in World War II - World - - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

30.5.15

Ukraine to honor groups that killed Jews in World War II - World - - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News: Another bill, signed into law in April, prescribes that Ukrainians honor a number of World War II nationalist organizations, some of which – such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – fought alongside the Nazis.

The law was protested by 40 historians from major Western universities in an open letter to Poroshenko and Ukrainian legislators.

"Not only would it be a crime to question the legitimacy of an organization (UPA) that slaughtered tens of thousands of Poles in one of the most heinous acts of ethnic cleansing in the history of Ukraine," the historians wrote, " but also it would exempt from criticism the OUN, one of the most extreme political groups in Western Ukraine between the wars, and one which collaborated with Nazi Germany at the outset of the Soviet invasion in 1941.