American Embassy Praises Ukrainian Nationalist With Anti-Semitic Past
(JTA) — A Ukrainian Jewish leader criticized the U.S. embassy’s praise for a writer who allegedly worked for an anti-Semitic newspaper.
The embassy celebrated the legacy of Olena Teliha Wednesday in a Facebook post that designated her one of the “women who inspire Ukraine” in connection with Women’s History Month in March.
Teliha was an activist for the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, which fought during the first half of the 20th century against Soviet domination. Leaders of OUN briefly collaborated with Nazi occupation forces before turning against them. Teliha was executed at the age of 35 at Babi Yar in Kiev, where the Nazis also murdered tens of thousands of Jews.
“Very sad that the U.S. Embassy is posting such stories,” Eduard Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, wrote on Facebook in response, adding: “Teliha worked obligingly in the anti-Jewish newspaper ‘Free Ukraine’ that called for the destruction of Jews and venerated Nazism.”
Last month, a monument honoring Teliha was unveiled at Babi Yar despite the Ukrainian Jewish Committee’s objections.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
