Holocaust trivialization?

Melnyk responds to allegations – "Everyone who knows me knows..."

Created: 07/05/2022, 14:42

By: Stephanie Munk

In an interview, Andrei Melnyk, Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, made serious allegations.

Now he is defending himself via Twitter.

Berlin - The Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk has denied the accusation that he downplayed the Holocaust with his statements about the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera.

“Dear friends, dear Jewish fellow citizens, I DETERMINATELY reject these absurd allegations!” the ambassador wrote on Twitter.

"Anyone who knows me knows: I have always condemned the Holocaust in the strongest possible terms."

The allegations against him are "absurd".

The Nazi crimes of the Holocaust are a shared tragedy of Ukraine and Israel.

In addition, Melnyk published two photos of himself and some men dressed in Orthodox Jewish clothing in an exuberant, familiar pose.

The Israeli Embassy accused Melnyk of downplaying the Holocaust

Melnyk was responding to a statement by the Israeli embassy on Twitter, which said: "The statements made by the Ukrainian ambassador are a distortion of historical facts, a trivialization of the Holocaust and an insult to those who were murdered by Bandera and his people."

Stepan Bandera was the leader of the radical wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during World War II.

Nationalist partisans from western Ukraine were responsible for ethnically motivated expulsions in 1943, in which tens of thousands of Polish and Jewish civilians were murdered.

Bandera fled to Germany after World War II, where he was murdered in 1959 by an agent of the Soviet secret service, the KGB.

Melnyk defended Bandera in an interview with journalist Tilo Jung, saying: "Bandera was not a mass murderer of Jews and Poles." According to Melnyk, the character of Bandera was deliberately demonized by the Soviet Union.

Melnyk defended radical leader Bandera in an interview

The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany has often been offended with his comments in recent months.

It was announced on Monday that he should probably leave Germany and move to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.