Accused Nazi guard John Demjanjuk dies at 91

[RZM]

2. I had an argument with somebody about this once

She was from Cleveland and of Ukrainian descent. She said that he was 'just an old man' and that the authorities should 'leave him alone.'

I argued that for crimes like the Holocaust, there is no statute of limitations.

But I also understand that Ukrainians, especially Ukrainian nationalists, were not in an enviable position during the war. They were hated and persecuted by the two most ruthless regimes in the history of 20th century Europe. When both the Nazis and the Soviets are your enemy, you have a serious problem.

This doesn't excuse the conduct of those who collaborated. But it's also true that at the very beginning of the war, there were reasons for Ukrainians to side with the Germans. Memories like the terror famine die pretty hard, especially when they are less than a decade old. Given the information the average peasant had in 1941, it was reasonable for them to assume that anybody would be better than the Soviets (they were wrong, of course - the Germans were worse to them). Also, people remembered the German occupation of Ukraine during WWI. While they hadn't been perfect, that occupation regime was nothing like what followed in WWII.

But it also has to be said that active anti-Semitism was a tie that bound Ukrainian nationalists and the Nazis. There's no skirting that or denying it. Many Ukrainian nationalists (including the leader Stepan Bandera, who spent much of the war in a German concentration camp) were nasty, vicious characters.