I will try to be brief, but the topic inevitably requires a lot of words.

First, about Jewish emancipation, since it is traditionally regarded as the justification for pogroms.

There is no doubt that in the Russian Empire there was a total discrimination of Jews. We are not even talking about the Black-Hundred organizations and their high-ranking patrons. The problem is not only that the Emperor Nicholas II personally hated Jews, but that the entire system of imperial power was openly anti-Semitic in nature. The fact that there were so many wealthy Jews in Russia and, in addition, Jews constituted a large proportion of people in the liberal professions and technical personnel, did not at all contradict the policy of "state anti-Semitism" - simply the role of "state" in the Russian Empire was relatively small. However, statistics that would take into account not only residents of the Jewish neighborhoods of capitals and major cities that make up the "Pale of Settlement", but also the inhabitants of countless locations, speaks of the general poverty of the Jewish population of the Russian Empire. Jews belonged to the poorest nations living under imperial power. Injustice and poverty served as a very powerful incentive for the emigration of Jews from Russia - and to participate in anti-state activities.

The Russian revolution was greeted by the Jews "with a bang". There are often disputes about the role of Jews in the Bolshevik coup, but this topic lies outside my post. I note only one fact: during the heyday of revolutionary activity among the urban Jews of the former Russian Empire (traditional Jewish townships took little part in the political life of the country), the lion's share was not made up of representatives of those or the socialist parties of Russia, but the Zionists. All the socialist leaders of the Jewish movement (together) accounted for about one-third to one-half (depending on the region) of all Jews participating in political activity. And the socialists were both Bolsheviks and their supporters, and the enemies of the Bolsheviks. In fact, it is unlikely that Jews supporting the Bolsheviks had in the Jewish urban environment more than 1/5 of support. As I said, in the mass, the small towns did not participate in this political struggle at all.

Disputes about the role of the Jews spread to emigration, where also in the 20s and 30s there were many Jews. For example, many considered the daily newspaper "The Latest News", whose editor-in-chief was Milyukov - a Jewish newspaper. Probably, that is why it was in emigration for the first time that the question arose, which then becomes one of the most urgent questions of Soviet Jews: the attitude to power?.

Several defectors from the USSR (not Jews) first started talking about the fact that Soviet Jews occupying certain posts in the Soviet hierarchy feel themselves hostages of the system. On the one hand, they hate the tsarist era, when the "Pale of Settlement" acted in the country and Jewish pogroms took place, to which the authorities looked through their fingers. On the other hand, they understand the horror of the crimes committed by the Bolsheviks, but are afraid to oppose them, because they expect that anger against the Bolsheviks, if they fall, will turn into monstrous Jewish pogroms.

It is curious that these defectors, who survived the strongest upheaval in their escape, did not at all attempt to blame all Jews for the sins of those Bolshevik bloody scum who were born Jews.

Meanwhile, during the 1920s, 30s and even 40s, the Bolsheviks were very active in playing the "Jewish card" no longer in the USSR itself, but in the West. And this despite the fact that in the USSR itself the first sprouts of the future state anti-Semitism actually occur during the repressions of the 1930s (the destruction of Yagoda and his entourage played a special role here), and also during the liquidation of the majority of "old" (before 1937) of illegal immigrants in the countries of the West and East. The bet on Jewish groups in the US, Austria, Poland, France tied many Western Jewish intellectuals to the USSR. The situation changed only after the shooting of famous Jews in the USSR in the late 40's - early 50's.

I, as a Jew, are convinced that I bear moral responsibility for the activities of all these voluntary and not very useful idiots, and outright scum, pragmatic killers, and rosy-cheeked idealists who opened the doors of the murderers. It was these people who participated in collectivization, and in the fact that they gave a nuclear bomb to Stalin. And for the fact that they were born Jewish, I inevitably bear moral responsibility.

My grandmother in old age, after the death of my grandfather, married one of such figures, who in the 30s was a compass of the World War II. I remember he told me how they dekulakized the peasants in the Odessa region. As an excuse for his actions, he repeated several times to me: they had ham in their cellar. I think everyone understands that it was not about kosher hams. I understand well the peasants who were dekulakized by my grandmother's husband. After all, my second grandfather - Papa Papa, was from a family of dekulakized. His father owned a small mill in the town of Domanevka, and after the arrival of activists, the father and brothers abandoned the house, the mill, and the farm - they started running. And the grandmother, from the family of the extremely poor householder (there were such), lost almost everything by the efforts of the Bolsheviks, and if not for the courage of her mother who fled Odessa from the children with her children, but the grandmother would perish during the artificial Bolshevik famine of 21 in Odessa, together with the greater part of her family.

Unfortunately, no one has the right to collect only "tops". We bear moral responsibility not only for those we want to be proud of, but also for those whom we would like to forget, like a nightmare. And I bear moral responsibility for the murderers from the GPU and the NKVD, the Jews by birth, although I myself hate them both.

I think that this is a great introduction, if we speak on such a terrible and uneasy theme as Lviv pogrom and SS division "Galichina" (Galicia).

In the famous book "Fatherland" by Robert Harris, and in the eponymous film by Christopher Menol, one of the main plot lines is the following intrigue:.

The Third Reich was able to win the Second World War. Years passed, Hitler grew old, and the policy of "detente" began in the country. It's familiar, is not it? New Hitler, in order to conclude an alliance with the United States, one must somehow reconcile National Socialism and democracy. Well, exactly how Brezhnev acted. And here comes the main mine under the "discharge", the main skeleton in the closet: the Jews.

Although the president of the United States in this reality is not John Kennedy, and his father, by the way, a well-known anti-Semite, but still the Nazis understand their weakness. Even he can not forgive them this publicly. And they try to hide the ends in the water - to remove all those people who were engaged in the extermination of the Jews.

After all, officially the Germans did not know what the Nazis did to the Jews. Yes, those who lived at that time understood a lot, but years have passed, and the new generation can already look at those events differently.

To be brief, both the author of the book and the filmmakers believed that opening this secret to the Germans would inevitably lead to the collapse of the Nazi regime. What can I say: pink western idealists!.

In the USSR, even the autopsy of all the monstrous crimes of Stalin did not shake the power of the authorities. Stalin won, and millions are ready to forgive him for this. It is no accident and now the programs dedicated to the tragedies of those years look at best, a couple of tens of thousands, and more often - less than ten thousand views. But the programs glorifying those years have hundreds of thousands of views.

All these fans of the SS division "Galicia" (Galicia) are absolutely no different from their Russian neighbors in the former Soviet kitchen. Yes, I understand that it is necessary to find in the examples of history pages, which at least something allow you to be proud of the nation. And the struggle of the SS division "Halychyna" (Galicia) against the Bolsheviks is quite worthy. But it must be well understood that the then alliance with Hitler inevitably carried the danger of war crimes. Hitler and his entourage did not by chance bet on the young, knowing full well that people with experience would be dangerous for them. In this sense, Hitler, Stalin, and many other figures of those years who professed the slogan of betting on the young - perfectly understood what they were doing. When Stalin shot Polish intellectuals in Katyn, he did it not because there was a bloody executioner. He did not yet know that he would retreat into the interior of the country. He was confident that the future - the conquest of Poland. And in order to conquer the country, you must first destroy her brain and soul. And for this it is necessary to kill all those who are capable of thinking. And such, in fact, not very much. So Katyn created not a bloody maniac, but a cold-blooded tyrant.

And Lviv pogrom was a conscious act of the Nazis, to wash Ukrainians in Jewish blood. And it is not necessary here to remember the dead in prisons, which the Nazis dragged into the light of God. Not the Jews killed them, and it was well known to the inhabitants of Lviv.

I did not read the statistics for Western Ukraine, but I saw this in the Baltic countries. On the eve of the summer of 1941, when Stalin planned to begin a campaign to the West, NKVD troops conducted along the entire border an action to deport the "hostile element". It must be said that when the Soviet troops entered the Baltic countries, Western Belorussia and Ukraine, they immediately began to rewrite all entrepreneurs, priests, teachers, farmers, and so on. And all these people in the spring of 1941, on the eve of the war, were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia.

So, according to statistics, in the Baltic States, Jews accounted for a very large percentage of those expelled - up to one-fifth. I do not think that there was a different situation in Western Ukraine. Jews were expelled, Jews were killed - as were the rest. And, as I have already written many times, among the non-emancipated Jews, Soviet power was, to put it mildly, very disliked. After all, just like the ROC, in the 20s and 30s persecuted and the rabbis.

A terrible picture of Lviv pogrom does not explain open murders in the prisons of the NKVD. Just people were called to kill, and they happily took part in it. How exactly in our dear Odessa - not tens or even hundreds, and thousands of ordinary people acted as scammers, condemning the Jews to the inevitable death. I understand that the Bolsheviks have done everything possible to teach people to knock. But this campaign of rapprochement, as Atom Morozov wrote in his memoirs, was performed "perfectly". "Troechnikov" was not here. By the way, in Odessa and the Odessa region and pogroms were also. But not as large as in Lviv.

Of course, the Lviv pogrom is not primarily connected with Ukrainians, but with the Poles. After all, at that time, it was a Polish, not a Ukrainian city. But the Lviv pogrom itself became a visible symbol of Nazi anti-Bolshevism.

The SS division Galicia (Galicia), just like all SS guard units, participated in the extermination of the Jews, the struggle against the partisans (not only in the territory of the USSR, but also in France and Yugoslavia).

Do you want to be proud of the struggle of SS "Galicia" with the Bolsheviks? It is your right. But then you take upon yourself the moral responsibility for their crimes, for the mass extermination of the Jews. And not only their.