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29 July 2008, 10:12FJCR cautions Ukraine against manipulating history
Moscow, July 29, Interfax - The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FJCR) has urged the Ukrainian authorities to look soberly at history and not to manipulate it for political purposes.
"Ukraine's current leaders have a positive opinion of what the FJCR is doing on the one hand, giving it every kind of support, but on the other, they tolerate a gallery, where a portrait of Roman Shukhevych is on display," FJCR's spokesman Boruh Gorin told Interfax-Religion.
Gorin was commenting on the opening ceremony for a gallery of portraits of prominent Ukrainians, attended by President Viktor Yushchenko and Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. A portrait of Shukhevych, a leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, is on display at the gallery.
The Ukrainian authorities must "understand that heroes of the struggle for independence" could also be villains, Gorin said.
Shukhevych was known for his role in the genocide of Jews in Ukraine. The militants he led exterminated dozens of Orthodox priests, among them Metropolitan Alexy (Hromadsky) of Kiev, for his refusal to separate from the Russian Church and to support the Nazi plan to form a local Ukrainian Church.
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