Rabbi Siva Fainerman: ‘We must not be afraid to speak the truth about the Holocaust and the Holodomor’

Rabbi Siva Fainerman of the Progressive Judaism community in Western Ukraine was born in Lutsk on the eve of the German-Soviet war. He knows about the Holocaust from his own life for he and his family survived the Holocaust. Today, he often turns to the topic and tries to talk about the people who helped Jews survive these horrors, in particular, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, who has still not been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

— Rabbi, today there is a lot of talk about the assessment of the tragedies of the twentieth century, and about forgiveness in this context. But can those involved in the Holocaust be forgiven?

— Life and death of man is in God's hands. We cannot take the place of God and make such decisions.

Humanity has this black stain on its conscience and tries by all means to wash it away. But humanity does not pay attention to the prehistory of the Holocaust. Even before coming to power Nazism popularized anti-human principles. But it did not have obstacles. For example, in 1925, when Hitler issued Mein Kampf, everyone thought that he published a collection of jokes? And in 1933, when Hitler came to power, what did people expect? That he wouldn’t put his ideas into practice?

Hitler was allowed to come to power. So I would really like to see on the defendant’s bench all the leaders of the people, who at different times agreed with Hitler – Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin in particular; that is, all those who are responsible for the death of fifty seven million people. These are not numbers, but real people with dreams and hopes. We say when a man dies, a whole universe is destroyed, and here 57 million universes were destroyed... And humanity was very cheaply bought off by staging a mock trial where the one who loses is paid.

And don’t people know that in 1953 there were already trains, cattle cars to deport all Jews in the USSR to Birobidzhan? To forests were there was nothing ... It's a historical fact that if not for the death of Stalin, a sudden death in the forests of Siberia and the Far East would have awaited all Jews. What would we say now about the Holocaust? Nobody thinks. If we do not oppose evil, who will besides us?

And people very often take a neutral position as a spectator as long as it does not directly affect them.” Remember how in Kafka “They came for my neighbor. There was so much screaming in his house, but we had our own matters. Today they came for me. But no one is screaming.”

The same question about the Holocaust cannot be separated from the question of the Holodomor in Ukraine. How should the Holodomor be assessed by humanity? I include not only Ukrainians, but also Russians, who died in the villages, and Jews from collective farms, who died near Odesa and without Hitler. Renowned historian Illya Kabanchyk writes about this in his book “Jews in Ukraine.” I want to explain what it was. In the late 1920s Jewish collective farms were established in southern Ukraine. They were composed of Jews who had never done agricultural work. They were given bread as an advance, but they had no experience working on land and therefore could not fulfill the plans. And so they ended up on the verge of existence and starvation. Later, in 1932-1933 the people on these farms suffered the fate of Ukrainians and other people who lived here.

Why did people die then? Why doesn’t humanity ask itself this? Or the representatives of our glorious Communist Party about the millions murdered in the ’30s, whether this was lawful? It is very scary to look into the eyes of the living God.

— Why is humanity afraid to speak about the truth regarding this?

— There is a fable about a man and pure truth. A man was walking in a field and saw something on the ground. It was something interesting, very bright, beautiful, large and with the words “pure truth.” He picks it up and carries it home. He carries it, but it is very uncomfortable to hold in his hands. He tries to carry it on his head and even to roll it, but nothing works. Well somehow he gets it home. He comes home and places it on the table. His wife complains: “So instead of dinner, you brought home some trinket. What’s it for?” The man calls his friends over to consult with them, “I found something that says ‘pure truth,’ what should I do with it?” His friends say: “You fool, it’s inconvenient, so large, let's break it into pieces and sell at the market.” They sawed it, went to the market, and tried to sell it, shouting: “Pure truth! I have pure truth! Buy some pure truth!” And the fools don’t understand that half of the truth is no longer truth, let alone small pieces of it.

And we are always looking for a small and convenient piece, but we need to look honestly and openly. We need to think how it happened that all of the 20th century was under the slogan formulated by Maxim Gorky: “Man contains everything, everything for man.” And many people in the 20th century were killed under the same slogan. We may never redeem our sins until we give ourselves the report: how could this have happened? And here we must look into the eyes of that terrible truth.

— You were born before the war. What fate befell your family?

— My father fought in the Red Army – he was a medical officer. My mother, though also an officer doctor, was with a small child and was not drafted by the army. At the beginning of the war we were in Lutsk. My mother with me, still an infant, in her arms moved eastward. Local villagers helped her safely reach Novohrad-Volynskyi. Here she led a military hospital, and through this work ended up in the south of Kazakhstan. After the war, in 1946, I moved with my family to Lviv. Thus at the beginning of the war we were saved by Ukrainian peasants from Volyn and Polissia.

— Today there is a lot of talk about those who are in those terrible times tried to resist this evil, in particular, the role of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky in the salvation of the Jews. What do you think of Andrey Sheptytsky?

— For me he is a saint. I was first to sign on behalf of the Jewish religious community the request to give Metropolitan Sheptytsky the title of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” In the Cathedral of St. George on the anniversary of Metropolitan Sheptytsky I read a memorial prayer for him, as he commanded – in Hebrew.

— Who else in the Ukrainian Church is as a saint for you?

— Whole families – such people are not born one at a time. Archimandrite Clement Sheptytsky – Metropolitan Andrey’s brother, the ihumen of the Studite monastery...should I continue? These are people who by fighting for and declaring their faith confirmed by their actions that they really are believers, that they actually practice the moral values ​​that were brought by my distant relative Yeshua from Nazareth, because his mother's name is the same as my mother’s - Miriam, and my father’s, like my grandfather’s, is Joseph.

— Can today’s attitude toward Jews in Ukraine be called tolerant? How comfortable is it for Jews to live in Ukraine, particularly in Lviv?

— After staying in the “paradise of all nations” for 70 years under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, I think any attitude will seem very tolerant. After the war, Stalin ordered the destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, explaining this action by only one sentence: “I do not trust this nation.”

— And is there anti-Semitism today?

— Why not? There is normal, everyday anti-Semitism. And it has and will always be here. This is the common phenomenon of xenophobia, which is based on conventional envy. It is difficult to argue that Cain killed Abel because of xenophobic feelings. They were brothers. But jealousy led to the first sin of murder. It is no wonder that the 10th commandment says not to covet anything that belongs to your neighbor, that is, do not be envious.

— Does this everyday anti-Semitism prevent Christian-Jewish relations in Ukraine in general?

— Far from it. And evidence of this is that we are speaking at the Ukrainian Catholic University, where I feel welcome.

Every May we together with Christian denominations in Lviv hold a common prayer at the Yaniv Cemetery to remember the victims of WWII. The Lviv History of Religions Museum has a separate section dedicated to the Jewish community.

Lviv is a multicultural, religiously tolerant city where even the street names testify to this. Our shared history connects us more than it divides.

Interviewers were Julia and Natalia Zadorozhna and Taras Antoshevskyy

Lviv, January 2013