Vinnitsa – Ukraine unveiled a statue for a nationalist leader who guided a regime that killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
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The memorial for Symon Petliura was unveiled Saturday in Vinnitsa, a city in the western part of the nation, on Defender of Ukraine Day, a national holiday, the RT news site reported. It is located in an area once known as Yerusalimka, or Jerusalem, and located next to a small synagogue that is still in operation.
The statue, which RT calls the first official monument to Petliura, though there is a bust of the early 20th-century leader in the capital, shows him sitting on a bench with a map of the country in his hands.
During Petliura’s time as head of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, 35,000 to 50,000 Jews were killed in a series of pogroms between 1918 and 1921.
Petliura was killed in 1926 by a Ukrainian-born Jewish watchmaker, Sholom Schwartzbard, who was acquitted by a French court that ruled he was acting in the heat of the moment after 15 of his relatives were killed in the pogroms.
While Americans debate whether to remove statues of bad guys, Ukraine puts on new ones.
Go to uman, and give these anti semites more money
Unfortunately thousands of Yidden still travel to and support this accursed country where Petliura and Khmelnytsky are regarded as national heroes.
I’d donate to pay for a statue of Sholom Schwartzbard looming over this guy’s statue.
Now I understand the reason my zeidie’s zeidie was killed at age 100, a healthy man, and why my zeidie had to suffer being chased by soldiers, hiding in a pile of hay, and my bubby and zeidie had to suffer a treacherous escape over the border until they reached NY. Happily, the great majority of their numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren are frum, rebuilding what was lost.