Simon Wiesenthal Center: Ukraine must stop glorifying murderers of Jews

Erecting the monument is a part of the events celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921, approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff has expressed his regrets for the fact that yet another person involved in the massacre of Jews is honored in Ukraine. He noted that in modern Ukraine murder of Jews seems to be no reason to deprive them of the status of hero. Dr. Efraim Zuroff has stressed that this process must be stopped.

Symon Petliura was one of the supreme military commanders (ataman – Editor) of the Ukrainian People’s Republic army. Being defeated by the Red Army, Petliura emigrated to the West in 1921.

In 1926, he was killed in Paris by Sholom Schwartzbard. During his trial, Schwartzbard said that the motive for the murder was revenge for the pogroms of Jews conducted by Petliura’s supporters during the Russian Civil War. Schwarztbard was acquitted by the French trial.

Simon Wiesenthal is the founder of the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Austria. He is also known as a “Nazi hunter”. He was a prisoner of Ukrainian Lvov ghetto and Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. 87 relatives of Wiesenthal were killed by Nazis during the Holocaust. Simon Wiesenthal Center with headquarter in Los Angeles was founded in 1977.