Conclusion: Ukrainians, Jews and the Holocaust

Extract

In December 2009 I had the privilege of participating in an unique gathering of scholars at Ditchley Park, near Oxford sponsored by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter project. As is usual with such conclaves, the formal discussion of papers in panel sessions was useful, but the exchanges between sessions - over breakfast, or late into the night sitting in the common areas - were often far more revealing. Looking back on the conference as a whole, including both formal and informal discourse, I would like to make two broad assertions about the current state of the academic debate, which are well reflected in the papers published in this symposium. First, the Holocaust looms larger than ever as the great challenge for historians of Ukraine. Although the program of the conference was dedicated to the interwar period, the topic was unavoidable and was engaged directly in virtually every session. Arcane yet heated debate over, for example, specific anti-Semitic statements of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during the 1930s was only cut short when a participant reminded the group that the OUN was numerically insignificant at the time these statements were made - yet limited attention was paid to the far more mainstream Ukrainian political movements such as the Ukrainian National Democratic Organization (UNDO). The trajectory of academic focus was pulled into a distorted orbit around the Holocaust, and that gravitational pull is increasing as the field matures.