“It is surely a travesty when such an honor is granted right at the period when the world pauses to remember the victims of the Holocaust on January 27” An influential Jewish human rights organization, Simon Wiesenthal Center, has condemned outgoing Ukrainian president’s to declare “Nazi collaborator” Stepan Bandera a national hero. Yushchenko’s January 22 move has already fueled fierce debate in Ukraine, where Bandera is a controversial figure, with his mainly West Ukrainian supporters considering him a hero. An MP from Sevastopol in the Crimea burned his passport in protest against the move, and two people have challenged the decree in court. In a letter to Ukraine’s ambassador, the director of government affairs of the U.S.-based organization expressed its “deepest revulsion at the recent honor awarded to Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis in the early stages of World War II, and whose followers were linked to the murders of thousands of Jews and others.” “It is surely a travesty when such an honor is granted right at the period when the world pauses to remember the victims of the Holocaust on January 27,” Mark Weitzman said in the letter. The organization also expressed its concern by the fact that the controversial decree came “at the period when the world pauses to remember the victims of the Holocaust on January 27.”
siehe auch: Ukraine to honor Nazi sympathizers. President awards medals to leaders of Ukrainian nationalist group, who helped Nazis murder Jews Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced this week that he had approved medals of commendation for members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), despite their cooperation with the Nazi regime during World War II.