Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

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Ukrainian Pogrom of Jews. On the day before Christmas, 1918, a large armed group of
Ukrainian peasants broke into the Jewish colony of Trudoliubovka and slaughtered many
of the inhabitants, marking the beginning of a series of attacks against Jews. It has been
estimated that anywhere between thirty-five thousand and fifty thousand Jews were killed
during the period 1919 to 1929, during which time Ukrainian Nationalist leader Simon
Petlura (1879–1926) ruled over independent Ukraine. Prior to this, the Germans (who
were in Ukraine to prevent the Russians from allying themselves with Britain and France
during the course of World War I) had frowned on the Ukrainians’ aggressive behavior
and restrained their atavistic actions. However, following the German’s pullout of 1918 in
order to return to the front, the Ukrainians continued their attacks against the Jews.
The Ukrainian attacks on Jews continued up to and throughout World War II, which
were unlawful under the Soviet regime but were impromptu localized affairs usually carried
out under the cover of darkness. Prior to World War II, more than eight hundred attacks
against Jews were carried out throughout the region. During the war itself, many Ukrainians
allied themselves with the Nazis, and even served in some of the death camps and
extermination centers. Post-war efforts to construct a new relationship between Jews and
Ukrainians, given the bad history of the past, have been largely unsuccessful.
UNAMIR. See United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda.
Unilateral. An action undertaken by a single nation that impacts, in one way or
another, the sovereign power of another state. Such action refers to those actions taken
either with the imprimatur of the international community or without the formal support
of the international community.
Uniqueness of Holocaust Argument/Debate. The ongoing argument/debate over the
uniqueness or nonuniqueness of the Holocaust continues to be an extremely sensitive and
complicated one among both the scholarly academic community and the community of survivors,
primarily Jews, and their descendants. Subsuming the Holocaust under the broader
framework of genocide, argue its proponents, erases its Jewish centrality and relativizes the
Nazi attempt at global extermination of the Jews. Not so, argue those who see the Holocaust
in the broader context of genocide as a historical phenomenon, each example of which is
unique unto itself, but each of which shares certain commonalities with others (e.g. statesponsorship,
dehumanization of the victim population, large-scale brutalization and mass
murder). At one end of the spectrum is Professor Steven Katz of Boston University arguing