Between August 26 and August 28, 1941, more than 23,000 Hungarian Jews were slaughtered by the German Gestapo in occupied Ukraine.

This is not “hidden” history . . . but it is largely overlooked within the framework of the six million (or more) Jewish lives taken in Europe by the Nazi regime during World War II. It was brought back to mind in yesterday’s “This Day In History” chapter (History.com), and caused me to ponder, once again, the horrors of invasion, occupation, destruction and conquest visited upon Ukraine by various invaders throughout its long history.

This particular story had its beginning in Hungary — a country with its own long, sad history of anti-Semitism. Tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews had been expelled from Hungary and migrated to Ukraine. When Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Ukraine, the German authorities tried to send them back to Hungary, but their homeland would not have them. So SS General Franz Jaeckeln made the decision to deal with the problem in the only way he knew how: by the “complete liquidation of those Jews by September 1.” [History.com, August 28, 2024.]

They were rounded up and, on August 28th, marched — more than 23,000 of them — to bomb craters at Kamenets Podolsk. They were ordered to undress, and were then “riddled . . . with machine-gun fire. Those who didn’t die from the spray of bullets were buried alive under the weight of corpses that piled atop them.” [Id.]

Problem solved . . . and three days ahead of schedule.

In all, more than 600,000 Jews had been murdered in Ukraine by the end of the war.

*. *. *

Today, it is not Jews who are being specifically targeted in Ukraine, but the country itself . . . and this time by Russia, not Germany. The reasons are different; in Russia’s case, it’s a land grab — a first step in its grand plan of expansion and world domination. But the effect — the death, the destruction, the brutality, the fear — are the same.

And still Ukraine carries on, with strength, courage, and undying love of country. To its past, its present, and most of all, its future, I say — Slava Ukraine!

Brendochka
8/29/24