HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

Reviews 231the European past helps us understand how East European Jews and Ukrainiansarrived at opposing views of a shared history.Historical moments symbolizing the national aspirations of Ukrainians weretragic moments for Jews. While Khmel'nyts'kyi and Petliura may be national iconsfor Ukrainians, they recall suffering for Jews. Khmel'nyts'kyi's rebellion againstPolish domination inspired horrifying pogroms. During the Ukrainian NationalRepublic (1917-1920), despite innovative efforts at inter-ethnic cooperation,Petliura's government failed to save Jews from pogroms in which thousands died.The collective memory of Ukrainians also emphasizes successive victimization.Moreover, the authors argue, Jews are seen as accomplices in the foreigndomination—Polish, Russian, or Soviet—and the Ukrainian suffering that punctuateUkrainian history. The participation of some Jews in Soviet rale (which stillappeared unshakable when Old Wounds went to press) is a particularly sore point,especially when Ukrainians recall the man-made famine of 1932-1933.The Nazi period deepened each group's sense of victimization and widened thegulf of mistrust separating Ukrainians and Jews. Resentment of Soviets increasedduring the bratał Soviet annexation of much of Western Ukraine. Ukrainians welcomedthe Nazis as liberators when they swept into Ukraine in mid-1941. Ultimately,of course, the Nazis brought not liberation but subjection. While Ukrainiansinitially preferred the invading Nazis to the Soviets, Jewish preferences werereversed. As the Germans advanced, the Jews fell victim to Einsatzgruppen but alsoto attacks by their Ukrainian neighbors. Jewish historical memory holds thatUkrainians facilitated the Nazi Holocaust, through a deadly mix of collaboration andindifference.Troper and Weinfeld's approach, focusing as it does on conflicting interpretationsof the same events, highlights the subjective nature of historical memory. But aweakness of their method is that it seems to resolve disputes simply by balancingclaims, by "splitting the difference." The distortions of group memory are sometimescited too uncritically. Still, their account is a careful and sensitive one (especiallycompared with the stridency common for this subject) that explains the explosivepotential of Ukrainian-Jewish relations, even when transplanted in Canada.The authors provide a detailed account of each community's development inCanada. The bulk of Ukrainian and Jewish immigration occurred in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukrainians settling mostly in the ruralWest, Jews settling chiefly in the urban centers of Quebec and Ontario. With a traditionof minority self-sufficiency, Jews were quick to establish communal institutions.Ukrainians developed a communal infrastructure more slowly. LaterUkrainian immigrants were more politicized, educated, and urbanized than earlierarrivals. Post-1945 arrivals came largely from the ranks of DPs and brought anationalist commitment far greater than that which they found in Canada. Many settledin Toronto, shifting the focus of Ukrainian communal life eastward, closer tothe centers of Jewish life. The Jewish community also absorbed a large number ofimmigrants after the war. Canada began to revise discriminatory immigration policieswhich had barred Jews during the Nazi period. Most new arrivals were