The European Rebuke to the Admirers of the Nazi Collaborators- Personalization of Hate is a Weapon of Cowards

Dear TBT,

Thanks to your correspondence bringing my attention to the letter published in your publication on February 25, 2010 (TBT 692, Letters to Editor, ‘Inna Rogatchi, Shame on You!’), concerning my article ‘Glorifying the Butcher.’ I would like to express the following :

I am surprised that [this] respectable European publication allows itself to print and to bring to [the] public domain a piece containing personal insults, especially in such quantity as it is done in the published letter. By doing so, you have encouraged an inflammatory personal attack which over-reaches the matter of discussion. 
I would not be getting involved into discussion on this level with persons who are producing insinuations, instead of conducting a civilized dialogue. The letter your publication has published does not contribute to a discussion. In addition to twisting and consciously misinterpreting facts, it just dissimilates hate and naming names, and thus has become [a] case of defamation, [a] matter for lawyers, to handle it professionally.

There is nothing else to be expected - as the public was privileged to see now - from those members of families and staunch supporters of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, Bandera-led OUN and their supporters, who seem to be proud of vicious deeds and policies of their predecessors, which is very well documented and is in an open public domain for anyone to get familiar with.
The tactics of public misleading and manipulation with facts is an old trick and [are] too well known tactics of Nazis, their collaborators, supporters and admirers. As it is widely known, some of them even went to the extent of disguising, as survivors of the concentration camps, to escape conviction for their murderous activities. Others are placating now the quarrel and discord of their heroes with the Nazi regime at the certain stage of previously quite successful and thorough collaboration, followed by their temporary imprisonment by Nazis, as an indulgency and mark of them as freedom-fighters. Nothing can be farther from the truth. And this truth is not Moscow, or Berlin-made propaganda, but the objective historical facts. Open up the records, and double-check.

I am not going to discuss with anyone who uses such hysterically-mannered language of insult, hatred and insinuation, especially with those who are advocating the evil still 65 years after the end of the WWII. They are placing themselves on the place – and under the specifications – they deserve.  Those people have no moral right to mediate, neither to try to lecture anyone on the matters which cannot be farther from their expressed views and their world. They and [those] alike have no right to cash [in] on the Holocaust and corresponding themes their predecessors were on the wronged part of, the part which has started and conducted it, the part of the criminals and murderers, and fierce supporters – in their own writings and deeds – of annihilation of millions of people of “the wrong” nationalities.

It is my pleasure to put your, and TBT, readers’ attention to the resolution ‘On the Situation in Ukraine (RC805995)’ passed by the European Parliament on the day of inauguration of Ukraine’s new president, February 25. This resolution addresses the issue on glorification of Bandera as the following :
“The European Parliament (19) deeply deplores the decision by the outgoing president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, posthumously to award Stepan Bandera, a leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with Nazi Germany, the title of ‘National Hero of Ukraine’; hopes, in this regard, that the new Ukrainian leadership will reconsider such decisions and will maintain its commitment to European values”
From ancient times, the behavioral axiom states that personalization of hate is a weapon of cowards. It also does not make history to re-write butchers into saviors.

And once again, it is important to understand for those who are apologetic to the Nazi collaborators and fierce racists, that Europe of today, 65 years after WWII, is willing and able to defend its European values from any sick distortions or efforts to do that. 

Inna Rogatchi
Finland
February 25, 2010