Not "Never Again"; Just "Again"

I continue to be both fascinated and inspired by the performance of Ukraine President Zelensky as a wartime leader. But since the reemergence of Israel as a nation-state after World War II, we've had a succession of Jewish wartime leaders comparable to Joshua, King David, and the Maccabees. Now we have a Jewish politician in Ukraine who's performing comparably, and he's going so far as to assert Jewish identity as a full component of Ukraine's emerging national identity.

This is a major theme in his May 8 address (or addresses) commemorating V-E day, of which a YouTube version with English subtitles is linked above. An English version is available in text here. However, he says things in the YouTube version that aren't in the official text, and they may in fact be entirely separate addresses. Near the start of the YouTube at 1:05 but not in the text is this important statement:

[W]e had no idea that our generation would witness the desecration of the words, which, as it turned out, are not the truth for everyone. This year we say "Never again" differently. We hear "Never again" differently. It sounds painful, cruel. Without an exclamation, but with a question mark. You say: Never again? Tell Ulkraine about it.

"Never again" is the Jewish motto referring to the Holocaust, but Zelensky is making the point that Ukrainian history can't be separated from the Holocaust. He certainly isn't unique; the Ukraine historian and YouTuber Rabbi Henry Abramson makes the continuing point that Jews generally fared better in Ukraine than in other parts of the Russian empire, and when much of Ukraine was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Jews and the dominant Polish Catholics in Ukraine got along especially well. In the text versioin, he says,

Today we celebrate the Day of Victory over Nazism. And we will not give anyone a single piece of our history. We are proud of our ancestors who, together with other nations in the anti-Hitler coalition, defeated Nazism. And we will not allow anyone to annex this victory, we will not allow it to be appropriated.

Our enemy dreamed that we would refuse to celebrate May 9 and the victory over Nazism. So that the word "denazification" gets a chance. Millions of Ukrainians fought Nazism and went through a difficult and long journey. The Nazis were expelled from Luhansk, the Nazis were expelled from Donetsk, and Kherson, Melitopol and Berdyansk were liberated from the occupiers.

The Nazis were expelled from Yalta, Simferopol, Kerch and the entire Crimea. Mariupol was liberated from the Nazis. They expelled the Nazis from all over Ukraine, but the cities I named are especially inspiring us today. They give us faith that we will drive the occupiers out of our own land for sure.

At 11:09 in the YouTube version, after enumerating Nazi atrocities in Poland, France, the Netherlands, the UK, and then-Chechoslovakia that parallel Russian atrocities in Ukraine, he draws another parallel:

And together, we are going through new, no less difficult battles. This is remembered by all Holocaust survivors -- how one nation can hate another. Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Danes, Georgians, Armenians, Belgians, Norwegians, and many others have not forgotten this -- all those who suffered from Nazism on their land and all those who defeated it in the anti-Hitler coalition. Unfortunately, there are those who, having survived all these crimes, having lost millions of people who fought for victory and gained it, have desecrated the memory of them and their feat today. The one who allowed the shelling of the cities of Ukraine from his land.

. . . Today, on the day of Remembrance and Reconciliation, we pay homage to all those who defended their homeland and the world from Nazism. We note the feat of the Ukrainian people and their contribution to the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition. Explosions, shots, trenches, wounds, famine, bombing, blockades, mass executions, punitive operations, occupation, concentration camps, gas chambers, yellow stars, ghettos, Babyn Yar, Katyn, captivity, forced labor.

He's incorporating the Holocaust in the overall Ukrainian and European experience of Nazism and making the point that, espcially as they apply to Ukraine, the experiences of Jews and Gentiles were not fully distinguishable. But he's also making the point that current Russian actions represent a full resuscitation of Nazism insofar as certain countries again are regarded as subhuman, without a right to separate existence.

And of course, especially in the YouTube address, he's wearing a T-shirt that says in English, "I'm Ukrainian", which stresses the global audience he's actually addressing.

Once again, I have to express my admiration for a masterful rhetorician who's operating at a Winston Churchill level of world leadership.