A Facebook post lamenting Adolf Hitler’s failure to wipe out all the Jews does not violate Ukrainian law, the former Soviet Republic’s Ministry of Internal Affairs reportedly told a Jewish legislator who filed an official complaint.
Oleksandr Feldman, a Jewish MP from Kharkiv, sent an official complaint after Yuri Gorbinko, a regional head of the ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic Svoboda party, posted images of vintage propaganda posters on the social media site, said Eduard Dolinsky, the Director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, an advocacy organization founded by Feldman.
The posts, which showcased demonic looking Jews wrecking havoc and killing innocent gentiles, were accompanied by a message reviling the Jews for opposing the leaders of the country’s World War Two ultra-nationalist movement.
"I recall the guy with short mustache who regrettably didn't finish his job,” Gorbinko wrote.
While Feldman asserted that the post violated a Ukrainian law inciting national, racial or religious hatred, Dolinsky stated that the official response was that there were no sufficient grounds to conclude that a criminal offense had been committed. Glorification of the Nazi regime is illegal in Ukraine.
Before the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, Svoboda held ten percent of the seats in Ukraine’s parliament. The party’s support evaporated following the uprising and the far right movement now only retains a few scattered mandates.
Gorbinko’s remarks only months after a retired Ukrainian general affiliated with the country’s intelligence services posted a call for the destruction of his country’s Jewish community on Facebook.
In May Vasily Vovk wrote that Jews “aren't Ukrainians and I will destroy you along with [Ukrainian oligarch and Jewish lawmaker Vadim] Rabinovych. I'm telling you one more time - go to hell, zhidi [kikes], the Ukrainian people have had it to here with you.”
Vovk faced no legal repercussions for his post.
Last month, a Holocaust memorial site in the western Ukrainian city of P’yatydni was desecrated with anti-Semitic graffiti. While violent anti-Semitic incidents are rare in Ukraine, vandalism against Holocaust memorials and Jewish cemeteries rose following the revolution.