Thank you. Again and again, for your long dedication to factual history. My visceral reflection today: During law school orientation, 40 years ago, another new student asked where I lived in the City of Cleveland. I replied, "Parma", a known ethnic suburb. "Well then you must be Polish." "No, I'm Ukrainian." He actually laughed. "You're not Ukrainian, you're Russian. You people don't even have a country".
During my early law firm days, a partner introduced me, as an attorney, to a client and added that I was of Ukrainian heritage. His instant reply, "What are you doing here? Aren't they hiring at Ford?" Some thirty years later, the sting is still present.
The simplest way to exert power over a person is to demean. It is insidious. It is a sign of ignorance.
Today, my right forearm bears a small tattoo of the Seal of Ukraine, the "tryzyb" or trident - perhaps unusual for a woman of my age. But what I stand for will never be mistaken.
My heart breaks, our house is on fire - keep writing Professor.
Your remark makes me remember the shock I felt when the Democrats were silent and passive during the orange sadist's 99-minute Tirade in Congress on Tuesday.
You must have taken a break and missed Texas Congressman Al Greene
's efforts to tell the president that he wasn't given a mandate to destroy Medicaid. Unlike MTG's outbursts, Congressman Greene's resulted in his being thrown out of the Chamber by the indignant little Mr. Johnson.
No, I saw that. But he was just one person. And he was censured, even though his behavior was no more disruptive than MTG during Biden's administration.
It was not 'great television' for sure. But it's something, and Monday morning quarterbacking isn't as helpful as providing a plan. It's takes warm blood to do something especially in the face of a bully and his gang, but much more to make a plan. The New Republic has an article by Thomas E. Ricks/March 10, 2025 called HUNKER DOWN Note to the Resistance: Protest Takes Planning. Learn From Dr. King. It says:
"The protesters of the civil rights movement didn’t just show up. They planned for every eventuality. It’s a lesson that’s starkly relevant today."
Perhaps the Democrats should have all worn military fatigues with the American flag to send the message that we too, understand it is time to get to work. Just a thought.
This is brilliant and insightful. I had been aware of this element in the bullying that day in the Oval Office, but you connect all the terrible stars here, and see the profound pattern. So important to heighten the visibility of this antisemitism at the heart of Russian and now, alas, U.S. aggression.
Professor Snyder makes profound parallels with a history too few really know that much about. I don't know I agree with the argument, but it is disturbingly thought-provoking. We dismiss the lunacy of Hitler's madness, yet don't see how deeply embedded anti-semitism was in Russia, Poland, Ukraine, with memes still brainlessly repeated even today by those who have absolutely no clue about their origins.
When that half-wit Marjorie Taylor Greene mouthed off about 'Jewish space lasers', I'm sure she was certain she was saying something witty, something nobody else but her had realized. She was actually repeating literally the most ancient hatred in history, animated by the stupidest of lies that keep reproducing themselves with new permutations.
Personally, I don't think either Trump or his little asswipe in matching red tie and eyeliner are aware of any of this. But that doesn't mean they're innocent. They mouth the lies that Putin wants them to. The shame for those of us who get this is unbearable.
The photos of a handful of egregiously outnumbered 1938 Vienna Jews being forced to scrub the street on the public square aren't complete without the crowds of jeering good citizens surrounding them who revelled in the sight. Google, "photo of vienna jews 1938" to observe a spectacle as old as ancient Rome and as modern as the White House Oval Office (with video cameras focused) last week.
I recall quotes from a survivor how they were able to motivate themselves in their struggle to survive the camps, rather than just seek a quick death one way or another. The answer was (I paraphrase from memory): if just one of us survives the camps to bear witness the price of suffering is worthwhile.
Even after a lifetime informing myself about the Nazi history and reflecting on the crimes of my forefathers and the suffering of the victims, the Holocaust in all its bestiality, cruelty and murderous intent is beyond my capacity to comprehend.
More antisemitic than Germany, actually. Because Russia, like Poland, had many more Jews than Germany, and Catholicism in Poland & Orthodox church in Russia are or were more fundamentalist than German Lutheranism. I believe that even Catholic Bavaria, the birthplace of Nazism, was more antisemitic than.the German north.
Thank you for this commentary. Interestingly, I must have unconsciously picked up on this issue, because right after the Oval Office confrontation, I sent off this letter to my MOCs and my local newspaper: I don't think that I've ever felt more sick to my stomach and demoralized watching these two psychopathic bullies pile up on a hero who is protecting Ukraine and thus the rest of Europe and the world from a catastrophic invasion by a tyrant.
President Zelenskyy, a Jew who has overcome the history of antisemitism in Ukraine to become its leader, browbeaten by a duo who should be prostrating themselves at his feet. I have been angry and afraid, and now I am utterly disgusted. If the Supreme Court allows this to go on, then the United States, despite so many good, caring people, will have completely and truly lost its soul.
When I was in high school, we had a history class discussion that I have never in all these years forgotten, about World War 2, in which we were asked to consider if what happened was something that could only have happened in the unique circumstances of Germany, or if it could happen anywhere - could it have happened here?
I am the daughter of a Latvian refugee, and I must conclude that, tragically, it can happen here.
I have always believed it could happen here given the right circumstances - and we have them. Several Republican acquaintances have insisted it could never happen here, because our system would not allow it. I'm not optimistic at the moment, but I hope they are right.
I’m American. 10 generation, or about.my ancestors fought along side Washington to make this country free. I fully support and admire Vladimir Zelenskyy. That meeting was as painful as it gets to watch.
Thank you for speaking the truth so clearly. I wrote you years ago, to ask if I was doing enough when Trump was first elected, and you wrote back that the most important thing I was doing was reaching out to young people. I am trying to figure out how to best do that now- to help them know how much their decency and kind actions matter. Your clarity about the patterns of hate and of love make the path ahead easier for me to see. Thank you so much for your continued presence and your generosity of spirit.
Witnessing that meeting in the Oval Office caused me moral injury. I knew I was watching the ritual abuse of another person. My outrage often feels maternal; when an innocent is bullied, it feels like it’s happening to my child. Which might explain why I didn’t at first see the anti-semitism, which is plain to see once explained. I didn’t think my sorrow and outrage could intensify, but it has. Along with fear. Fear for all of us. The stakes just got ratcheted up. There are no boundaries for this vicious cabal.
I know what you mean about feeling moral injury to yourself from watching someone else being abused. The abused person becomes the child or the self that needs protection. I find it too painful even to watch. Thanks.
The life of an “empath” is a challenge of self protection. Part of how I deal with it is relative isolation; I live alone, off grid, in a rural location. Probably not officially recommended. These forums actually help me to learn I am not alone. We are not alone, Susan. I hope we are a metric of morality. But it does hurt.
Thank you for this deeply distressing essay on antisemitism and Zelensky. I was unaware of his Jewish heritage. Now, my shame as an American is even more profound, a shame for the actions of others over whom I have no impact, yet deeply taint our country.
Yes, I’ve seen far right antisemites opposing Ukraine for no other reason than Zelenskyy being Jewish (pretty fringe types, I admit, but most support Trump.)
What a powerful post. I have been so impressed with the leadership of Zelenskyy during his time in office. History will look to him the way we look to Churchill. Ukraine is lucky to have such a brave, courageous leader. Here in the US that lack of courage, integrity, morality, and bravery in “leadership” has hurt us domestically and internationally and if the American people don’t speak out, we too will land in the history books as an evil country that the world fought In solidarity to save democracy and freedom.
Yes, I agree. I can't believe that the Republicans have abandoned democracy in order to either stay in congress or to get rich or both. They used to have some integrity but now, it appears to have disappeared.
It’s also unfortunate that our culture associates the highest levels of success with money instead of the character traits listed above. The American love for money and material wealth has always been a weak point when dealing with Russian intelligence/espionage and the Russian government
Thank you for writing this. Of course, you are correct: It was an antisemitic confrontation in the Oval Office -- I recognized the "confrontation" but failed to see the antisemitic aspects of it.
When I went to Auschwitz in 1989, our Polish guide made a big point of stating that the Jews did not fight back, just let the authorities take them to the death camps. When I challenged her with some facts (I grew up in the shadow of WWII), she became very defensive, saying that is what her father had told her.
"Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union."
What I found very interesting about the Gruner book, which is based in large part on police archives, is that Jewish people who protested the loss of their civil rights by formally petitioning the government were often processed through the courts - where on rare occasion they might win a case, but otherwise receive survivable jail sentences. Even when sent to penitentiaries. But Jewish people whose intercepted private letters included any critique or complaint of the Nazi regime would be handed over to the Gestapo, often tortured, and sent to concentration camps or death camps. As the war went on treatment was more harsh in every aspect of life and in both systems. Individually, people were very creative in their personal dissent. One man sent denunciations in anonymous postcards to to strangers at addresses in a wide area. But even though he mailed them from different post boxes, they were in enough proximity that he was caught.
This is extremely powerful and entirely convincing. In a strange way I'm relieved to understand the horribleness in the Oval Office so much more profoundly, than as an outburst of schoolyard bullying.
In the very early days of the invasion in 2022, as the Russians still advanced on Kyiv, President Zelenskyy was being interviewed live in some fortified place in Kyiv by British television. Moments into the interview, a Ukrainian staff member came quickly into the room and said, in English, "Excuse me, but they are shelling Babyn Yar." The British reporter said, "What - the memorial?" Zelenskyy immediately left the room, saying as he went, with I thought great bitterness, "Excuse me. This is Russia - congratulations." He must have been grimly unsurprised that the Russian invaders would commit such a foul antisemitic act. I'm glad to recall this now.
I knew I was missing a subtext during the Oval Office shakedown. It was so bizarre. I didn’t recognize what it was. Then I read someone at the Kremlin had called him a pig. That was a tip-off but I still didn’t have the whole picture. Thank you for explaining. I wish it were not so.
Tim, as a fellow historian I applaud your perspective, which is accurate and important. I just wish you had a decent copyeditor who could streamline your essays (and fix the typos) . . . There are lots of earlier examples I could, as a medieval historian, present to reinforce your presentation of the verbal lynching in the Oval Office a week ago as an antisemitic act. But I think it is far more complicated than that. The Felon and his family (remember: his daughter converted when she married the little Kushner boy whose felonious father would be in jail to this day were he not pardoned by the Felon in Chief) have been making cynical use of the State of Israel for decades, playing them against their other robber baron buddies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The "Republicans"--following the "teachings" of their christofascist leaders--have also cynically exploited support for Israel for reasons that have nothing to do with the preservation of a Jewish homeland. They believe that Jews have to be in Jerusalem for the Antichrist to appear and the End Times to happen, when of course all Jews will be pitched into the eternal flames of Hell. EVERY action on the part of the American Right could be labeled ultimately antisemitic, including all their supposed support for Jews at Columbia University where pro-Palestinian protests were invaded by obvious antisemites.
"Tim, as a fellow historian I applaud your perspective, which is accurate and important. I just wish you had a decent copyeditor who could streamline your essays (and fix the typos..."
Some people get tripped up by their obsessions regarding typos and form...nevertheless her other points are more important and needed to be made here, as I have in my own comment here about how Trump escapes accusations of antiSemitism by supporting right wing Israel which is I believe cynical because he knows this will grab support of some Jews. I know this as a fact... and in south Florida there are plenty such minded.
I go to Columbia three times a week and I know for a fact that antisemitism at Columbia has been grossly exaggerated. The student demonstrators I have talked to have all been motivated by profound sorrow at the egregious suffering of the Palestinians and not, so far as I can tell, by antisemitism in the sense of hatred for Jewish people. True, the protests this fall (not last Spring) had moments of excessive pro-Hamas slogans that seemed antisemitic to me. Be those exceptions as they may, the overall protest movement at Columbia has been motivated by humane concern for the sufferings of Gaza and the West Bank. And Columbia has been pretty ferocious about clamping down on illegal protests (Hamilton Hall, Barnard), and keeping the nutty lefties who congregate outside the gates (some of whom really are antisemitic) out. Now Trump is using the small nugget of antisemitism in the overall (first-amendment legal) protest movement to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Columbia research (mostly in medical and scientific areas far removed from any of the protests, legal or not). Few if any institutions have contributed more to making America great (or to advancing the place of Jewish people) in the past 100 years than Columbia. Now accusations of antisemitism, which should be as solemn and serious as the topic, are being made, shamefully, into cudgels for Trump's and Netanyahu's tawdry political purposes.
Yes!! This is using taxpayer money as a weapon to curry favor with right wing Jews and Israel. It’s suppressing expression and dissent. The protests against the Gaza war was and is not antisemitism.
Yep. Indeed, Columbia had fewer limits on admitting Jewish students than other Ivys, with perhaps the exception of Cornell (where one of my great-uncles went before WW2--he died on D-Day). Also, objecting to the creeping fascism in Israeli politics is not antisemitism. Just like objecting to christofascism is not anti-Christian.
Don’t pat yourself on the back with that “fellow historian” nonsense. Timothy Snyder is brilliant and would never make a snide comment about a supposed peer’s copyediting. And as a Jew, I could care less about your opinions on anti semitism.
There are two ways to be Jewish. One is religious and the other is your ancestry; your DNA. Before Judaism was a religion the Jews were a people. I am a Jew and will always be even if I converted to Christianity, another religion, or became an atheist or agnostic. It is immutable. There are Jews who converted to the religion of Judaism, and they are considered full partners as they should be, but they do lack the DNA component. I personally don’t know what people mean by the word “God,” so I can’t say I believe. But I am a Jew nonetheless. Zelens’kyi is a Jew through his DNA whatever his religious point of view might be if his ancestry is like mine.
We do have identity issues personally and even with one another. Some religious Jews you would have trouble with.They feel that if you do not practice, you are not a Jew. But the DNA makes it certain that you belong. It's an issue of belonging..... (and an issue especially when they come after you.) AntiSemites don't care what you believe, it's just that you are Jewish, the perennial scapegoat.. and not Christian.
Zelensky does not wear his Jewishness boldly nor retreat from it. He represents all his people, mainly not Jewish. They trust and like him. They should. This says a lot about the Ukrainians.
I took a class about Russian immigrants close to 30 years ago. The teacher was a Russian Jew. She told the class that being Jewish in Russia wasn't about religion it was ethnicity. She said Russians could identify by appearance who was Jewish and behaved accordingly.
So she was asked to identify who in the class was Jewish. She missed the blonde woman who looked Swedish and identified me. That was a surprise, I'm British on both sides of the family and not Jewish.
Not quite true that being Jewish in Russia is only about ethnicity. It depends on how oppressed. This suppressed Jews. Jews had to hide their practices or assimilate or convert.
Thank you Dr. Snyder, as a Jewish student of the Holocaust, It was pretty apparent to me from the first, that, that the attack on Zelensky last week, was highly antisemitic, and I am glad to find you raised this issue. I fully agree with your observations of that fateful Friday, I also watched trump attacking Zelensky even before he stepped foot into the White House, at the door the first thing he did was ridicule him for not wearing a suit, putting Zelensky on defense right from the start. Musk never wears a suit, but this was irrelevant, just the first part of the humiliation - the ungrateful cheap Jew can’t even afford a suit. Then the barrage of attacks from trump and his mindless sidekick Vance, further humiliating Zelensky even further, the sole warrior hero in the room. This ungrateful Jew didn’t thank vacuous, ignorant and transactional trump enough, wasn’t appreciative enough, wasn’t worthy enough for their interest or support. He was ambushed, they never listened to a word he said. And they demanded he apologize! It was so painful to watch Zelensky, the stranger in that room full of fascists. A reporter again asked him about his suit, and the room laughed, as he was, at that point, already traumatized by the event. It reminded me of pictures in Austria following the Anschluss, of Jewish intelligentsia given toothbrushes by the Nazis to scrub the streets of Vienna, while onlookers belittled and laughed at them. It was their way for the Nazis then to humiliate and dehumanize the Jews.
Thank you for all the work that you do! Your on line Yale course on the History of Ukraine was immensely insightful and appreciated, and highly recommended for everyone to watch! Thank you for all of your efforts!
Thank you to Timothy Snyder. This article makes explicit what was troubling me about the oval office meeting, aside from the humiliation and lies. As an American born in Kansas, it is difficult for me to suss out antisemitism. My husband, a hidden child during the holocaust, has no such problem. He identified it, and Timothy Snyder has explained it.
Thank you. Again and again, for your long dedication to factual history. My visceral reflection today: During law school orientation, 40 years ago, another new student asked where I lived in the City of Cleveland. I replied, "Parma", a known ethnic suburb. "Well then you must be Polish." "No, I'm Ukrainian." He actually laughed. "You're not Ukrainian, you're Russian. You people don't even have a country".
During my early law firm days, a partner introduced me, as an attorney, to a client and added that I was of Ukrainian heritage. His instant reply, "What are you doing here? Aren't they hiring at Ford?" Some thirty years later, the sting is still present.
The simplest way to exert power over a person is to demean. It is insidious. It is a sign of ignorance.
Today, my right forearm bears a small tattoo of the Seal of Ukraine, the "tryzyb" or trident - perhaps unusual for a woman of my age. But what I stand for will never be mistaken.
My heart breaks, our house is on fire - keep writing Professor.
"The simplest way to exert power over a person is to demean." Truth.
And when the demeaning occurs, the Onlookers take note of the Silence.
Silence, History's frequent validator of cruelty.
Your remark makes me remember the shock I felt when the Democrats were silent and passive during the orange sadist's 99-minute Tirade in Congress on Tuesday.
You must have taken a break and missed Texas Congressman Al Greene
's efforts to tell the president that he wasn't given a mandate to destroy Medicaid. Unlike MTG's outbursts, Congressman Greene's resulted in his being thrown out of the Chamber by the indignant little Mr. Johnson.
No, I saw that. But he was just one person. And he was censured, even though his behavior was no more disruptive than MTG during Biden's administration.
And, kdsherpa, when he was walked out, how many Dems accompanied him?
It was not 'great television' for sure. But it's something, and Monday morning quarterbacking isn't as helpful as providing a plan. It's takes warm blood to do something especially in the face of a bully and his gang, but much more to make a plan. The New Republic has an article by Thomas E. Ricks/March 10, 2025 called HUNKER DOWN Note to the Resistance: Protest Takes Planning. Learn From Dr. King. It says:
"The protesters of the civil rights movement didn’t just show up. They planned for every eventuality. It’s a lesson that’s starkly relevant today."
https://newrepublic.com/article/192402/trump-resistance-protest-planning-learn-martin-luther-king
Mr. Johnson is really the saddest specimen amongst the cabal. Hitler had those kinds around him.
This is beautiful, and I will not forget the pain you mentioned. I am sorry for the incivility that humans inflict upon other humans.
❤️
🙏
Thank you for articulating so well what I came to say, as I sit here crying in relief to have such a public ally as Snyder
Perhaps the Democrats should have all worn military fatigues with the American flag to send the message that we too, understand it is time to get to work. Just a thought.
This is brilliant and insightful. I had been aware of this element in the bullying that day in the Oval Office, but you connect all the terrible stars here, and see the profound pattern. So important to heighten the visibility of this antisemitism at the heart of Russian and now, alas, U.S. aggression.
Professor Snyder makes profound parallels with a history too few really know that much about. I don't know I agree with the argument, but it is disturbingly thought-provoking. We dismiss the lunacy of Hitler's madness, yet don't see how deeply embedded anti-semitism was in Russia, Poland, Ukraine, with memes still brainlessly repeated even today by those who have absolutely no clue about their origins.
When that half-wit Marjorie Taylor Greene mouthed off about 'Jewish space lasers', I'm sure she was certain she was saying something witty, something nobody else but her had realized. She was actually repeating literally the most ancient hatred in history, animated by the stupidest of lies that keep reproducing themselves with new permutations.
Personally, I don't think either Trump or his little asswipe in matching red tie and eyeliner are aware of any of this. But that doesn't mean they're innocent. They mouth the lies that Putin wants them to. The shame for those of us who get this is unbearable.
Trump was raised by an avid Jew hater. Trump is aware of it and leverages it to keep a segment of his base in line.
The photos of a handful of egregiously outnumbered 1938 Vienna Jews being forced to scrub the street on the public square aren't complete without the crowds of jeering good citizens surrounding them who revelled in the sight. Google, "photo of vienna jews 1938" to observe a spectacle as old as ancient Rome and as modern as the White House Oval Office (with video cameras focused) last week.
I recall quotes from a survivor how they were able to motivate themselves in their struggle to survive the camps, rather than just seek a quick death one way or another. The answer was (I paraphrase from memory): if just one of us survives the camps to bear witness the price of suffering is worthwhile.
Even after a lifetime informing myself about the Nazi history and reflecting on the crimes of my forefathers and the suffering of the victims, the Holocaust in all its bestiality, cruelty and murderous intent is beyond my capacity to comprehend.
Russia was always as anti-semitic as Nazi Germany; they just don't do it on a grand scale.
More antisemitic than Germany, actually. Because Russia, like Poland, had many more Jews than Germany, and Catholicism in Poland & Orthodox church in Russia are or were more fundamentalist than German Lutheranism. I believe that even Catholic Bavaria, the birthplace of Nazism, was more antisemitic than.the German north.
Thank you for this commentary. Interestingly, I must have unconsciously picked up on this issue, because right after the Oval Office confrontation, I sent off this letter to my MOCs and my local newspaper: I don't think that I've ever felt more sick to my stomach and demoralized watching these two psychopathic bullies pile up on a hero who is protecting Ukraine and thus the rest of Europe and the world from a catastrophic invasion by a tyrant.
President Zelenskyy, a Jew who has overcome the history of antisemitism in Ukraine to become its leader, browbeaten by a duo who should be prostrating themselves at his feet. I have been angry and afraid, and now I am utterly disgusted. If the Supreme Court allows this to go on, then the United States, despite so many good, caring people, will have completely and truly lost its soul.
When I was in high school, we had a history class discussion that I have never in all these years forgotten, about World War 2, in which we were asked to consider if what happened was something that could only have happened in the unique circumstances of Germany, or if it could happen anywhere - could it have happened here?
I am the daughter of a Latvian refugee, and I must conclude that, tragically, it can happen here.
Judy Fletcher
I have always believed it could happen here given the right circumstances - and we have them. Several Republican acquaintances have insisted it could never happen here, because our system would not allow it. I'm not optimistic at the moment, but I hope they are right.
It's the question of how "it" is defined. It won't be exactly the same ... it will look differently, but the "it" is already happening.
I’m American. 10 generation, or about.my ancestors fought along side Washington to make this country free. I fully support and admire Vladimir Zelenskyy. That meeting was as painful as it gets to watch.
Right on, Zara!
Well, la, la. We now know, thanks to President Trump, that Washington was our second-best president.
Thank you for speaking the truth so clearly. I wrote you years ago, to ask if I was doing enough when Trump was first elected, and you wrote back that the most important thing I was doing was reaching out to young people. I am trying to figure out how to best do that now- to help them know how much their decency and kind actions matter. Your clarity about the patterns of hate and of love make the path ahead easier for me to see. Thank you so much for your continued presence and your generosity of spirit.
Witnessing that meeting in the Oval Office caused me moral injury. I knew I was watching the ritual abuse of another person. My outrage often feels maternal; when an innocent is bullied, it feels like it’s happening to my child. Which might explain why I didn’t at first see the anti-semitism, which is plain to see once explained. I didn’t think my sorrow and outrage could intensify, but it has. Along with fear. Fear for all of us. The stakes just got ratcheted up. There are no boundaries for this vicious cabal.
@JF
I know what you mean about feeling moral injury to yourself from watching someone else being abused. The abused person becomes the child or the self that needs protection. I find it too painful even to watch. Thanks.
The life of an “empath” is a challenge of self protection. Part of how I deal with it is relative isolation; I live alone, off grid, in a rural location. Probably not officially recommended. These forums actually help me to learn I am not alone. We are not alone, Susan. I hope we are a metric of morality. But it does hurt.
Thank you for this deeply distressing essay on antisemitism and Zelensky. I was unaware of his Jewish heritage. Now, my shame as an American is even more profound, a shame for the actions of others over whom I have no impact, yet deeply taint our country.
Yes, I’ve seen far right antisemites opposing Ukraine for no other reason than Zelenskyy being Jewish (pretty fringe types, I admit, but most support Trump.)
What a powerful post. I have been so impressed with the leadership of Zelenskyy during his time in office. History will look to him the way we look to Churchill. Ukraine is lucky to have such a brave, courageous leader. Here in the US that lack of courage, integrity, morality, and bravery in “leadership” has hurt us domestically and internationally and if the American people don’t speak out, we too will land in the history books as an evil country that the world fought In solidarity to save democracy and freedom.
Yes, I agree. I can't believe that the Republicans have abandoned democracy in order to either stay in congress or to get rich or both. They used to have some integrity but now, it appears to have disappeared.
It’s also unfortunate that our culture associates the highest levels of success with money instead of the character traits listed above. The American love for money and material wealth has always been a weak point when dealing with Russian intelligence/espionage and the Russian government
Thank you for writing this. Of course, you are correct: It was an antisemitic confrontation in the Oval Office -- I recognized the "confrontation" but failed to see the antisemitic aspects of it.
When I went to Auschwitz in 1989, our Polish guide made a big point of stating that the Jews did not fight back, just let the authorities take them to the death camps. When I challenged her with some facts (I grew up in the shadow of WWII), she became very defensive, saying that is what her father had told her.
Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany: Wolf Gruner
.https://youtu.be/KhA4xdZa3k4?si=CoEfWhSgWG-QPQew.
Resisters
.https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300267198/resisters/.
"Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union."
.https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-resistance.
Excellent! Thank you!
What I found very interesting about the Gruner book, which is based in large part on police archives, is that Jewish people who protested the loss of their civil rights by formally petitioning the government were often processed through the courts - where on rare occasion they might win a case, but otherwise receive survivable jail sentences. Even when sent to penitentiaries. But Jewish people whose intercepted private letters included any critique or complaint of the Nazi regime would be handed over to the Gestapo, often tortured, and sent to concentration camps or death camps. As the war went on treatment was more harsh in every aspect of life and in both systems. Individually, people were very creative in their personal dissent. One man sent denunciations in anonymous postcards to to strangers at addresses in a wide area. But even though he mailed them from different post boxes, they were in enough proximity that he was caught.
Yeah--the mythology continues to distort the facts, especially in regions that had been controlled by the USSR.
This is extremely powerful and entirely convincing. In a strange way I'm relieved to understand the horribleness in the Oval Office so much more profoundly, than as an outburst of schoolyard bullying.
In the very early days of the invasion in 2022, as the Russians still advanced on Kyiv, President Zelenskyy was being interviewed live in some fortified place in Kyiv by British television. Moments into the interview, a Ukrainian staff member came quickly into the room and said, in English, "Excuse me, but they are shelling Babyn Yar." The British reporter said, "What - the memorial?" Zelenskyy immediately left the room, saying as he went, with I thought great bitterness, "Excuse me. This is Russia - congratulations." He must have been grimly unsurprised that the Russian invaders would commit such a foul antisemitic act. I'm glad to recall this now.
I knew I was missing a subtext during the Oval Office shakedown. It was so bizarre. I didn’t recognize what it was. Then I read someone at the Kremlin had called him a pig. That was a tip-off but I still didn’t have the whole picture. Thank you for explaining. I wish it were not so.
Tim, as a fellow historian I applaud your perspective, which is accurate and important. I just wish you had a decent copyeditor who could streamline your essays (and fix the typos) . . . There are lots of earlier examples I could, as a medieval historian, present to reinforce your presentation of the verbal lynching in the Oval Office a week ago as an antisemitic act. But I think it is far more complicated than that. The Felon and his family (remember: his daughter converted when she married the little Kushner boy whose felonious father would be in jail to this day were he not pardoned by the Felon in Chief) have been making cynical use of the State of Israel for decades, playing them against their other robber baron buddies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The "Republicans"--following the "teachings" of their christofascist leaders--have also cynically exploited support for Israel for reasons that have nothing to do with the preservation of a Jewish homeland. They believe that Jews have to be in Jerusalem for the Antichrist to appear and the End Times to happen, when of course all Jews will be pitched into the eternal flames of Hell. EVERY action on the part of the American Right could be labeled ultimately antisemitic, including all their supposed support for Jews at Columbia University where pro-Palestinian protests were invaded by obvious antisemites.
Linda Mitchell, KCMO
"Tim, as a fellow historian I applaud your perspective, which is accurate and important. I just wish you had a decent copyeditor who could streamline your essays (and fix the typos..."
Seriously? That's your first thought? OMGosh.
Some people get tripped up by their obsessions regarding typos and form...nevertheless her other points are more important and needed to be made here, as I have in my own comment here about how Trump escapes accusations of antiSemitism by supporting right wing Israel which is I believe cynical because he knows this will grab support of some Jews. I know this as a fact... and in south Florida there are plenty such minded.
I always appreciate your comments.
I go to Columbia three times a week and I know for a fact that antisemitism at Columbia has been grossly exaggerated. The student demonstrators I have talked to have all been motivated by profound sorrow at the egregious suffering of the Palestinians and not, so far as I can tell, by antisemitism in the sense of hatred for Jewish people. True, the protests this fall (not last Spring) had moments of excessive pro-Hamas slogans that seemed antisemitic to me. Be those exceptions as they may, the overall protest movement at Columbia has been motivated by humane concern for the sufferings of Gaza and the West Bank. And Columbia has been pretty ferocious about clamping down on illegal protests (Hamilton Hall, Barnard), and keeping the nutty lefties who congregate outside the gates (some of whom really are antisemitic) out. Now Trump is using the small nugget of antisemitism in the overall (first-amendment legal) protest movement to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Columbia research (mostly in medical and scientific areas far removed from any of the protests, legal or not). Few if any institutions have contributed more to making America great (or to advancing the place of Jewish people) in the past 100 years than Columbia. Now accusations of antisemitism, which should be as solemn and serious as the topic, are being made, shamefully, into cudgels for Trump's and Netanyahu's tawdry political purposes.
Yes!! This is using taxpayer money as a weapon to curry favor with right wing Jews and Israel. It’s suppressing expression and dissent. The protests against the Gaza war was and is not antisemitism.
Yep. Indeed, Columbia had fewer limits on admitting Jewish students than other Ivys, with perhaps the exception of Cornell (where one of my great-uncles went before WW2--he died on D-Day). Also, objecting to the creeping fascism in Israeli politics is not antisemitism. Just like objecting to christofascism is not anti-Christian.
Don’t pat yourself on the back with that “fellow historian” nonsense. Timothy Snyder is brilliant and would never make a snide comment about a supposed peer’s copyediting. And as a Jew, I could care less about your opinions on anti semitism.
I too am Jewish--and a professional historian of medieval Europe. So don't make assumptions based on your misinformation.
There are two ways to be Jewish. One is religious and the other is your ancestry; your DNA. Before Judaism was a religion the Jews were a people. I am a Jew and will always be even if I converted to Christianity, another religion, or became an atheist or agnostic. It is immutable. There are Jews who converted to the religion of Judaism, and they are considered full partners as they should be, but they do lack the DNA component. I personally don’t know what people mean by the word “God,” so I can’t say I believe. But I am a Jew nonetheless. Zelens’kyi is a Jew through his DNA whatever his religious point of view might be if his ancestry is like mine.
We do have identity issues personally and even with one another. Some religious Jews you would have trouble with.They feel that if you do not practice, you are not a Jew. But the DNA makes it certain that you belong. It's an issue of belonging..... (and an issue especially when they come after you.) AntiSemites don't care what you believe, it's just that you are Jewish, the perennial scapegoat.. and not Christian.
Zelensky does not wear his Jewishness boldly nor retreat from it. He represents all his people, mainly not Jewish. They trust and like him. They should. This says a lot about the Ukrainians.
Likely his ancestry is exactly like ours, and possibly a distant cousin, given the shallowness of our gene pool.
I took a class about Russian immigrants close to 30 years ago. The teacher was a Russian Jew. She told the class that being Jewish in Russia wasn't about religion it was ethnicity. She said Russians could identify by appearance who was Jewish and behaved accordingly.
So she was asked to identify who in the class was Jewish. She missed the blonde woman who looked Swedish and identified me. That was a surprise, I'm British on both sides of the family and not Jewish.
Not quite true that being Jewish in Russia is only about ethnicity. It depends on how oppressed. This suppressed Jews. Jews had to hide their practices or assimilate or convert.
Thank you Dr. Snyder, as a Jewish student of the Holocaust, It was pretty apparent to me from the first, that, that the attack on Zelensky last week, was highly antisemitic, and I am glad to find you raised this issue. I fully agree with your observations of that fateful Friday, I also watched trump attacking Zelensky even before he stepped foot into the White House, at the door the first thing he did was ridicule him for not wearing a suit, putting Zelensky on defense right from the start. Musk never wears a suit, but this was irrelevant, just the first part of the humiliation - the ungrateful cheap Jew can’t even afford a suit. Then the barrage of attacks from trump and his mindless sidekick Vance, further humiliating Zelensky even further, the sole warrior hero in the room. This ungrateful Jew didn’t thank vacuous, ignorant and transactional trump enough, wasn’t appreciative enough, wasn’t worthy enough for their interest or support. He was ambushed, they never listened to a word he said. And they demanded he apologize! It was so painful to watch Zelensky, the stranger in that room full of fascists. A reporter again asked him about his suit, and the room laughed, as he was, at that point, already traumatized by the event. It reminded me of pictures in Austria following the Anschluss, of Jewish intelligentsia given toothbrushes by the Nazis to scrub the streets of Vienna, while onlookers belittled and laughed at them. It was their way for the Nazis then to humiliate and dehumanize the Jews.
Thank you for all the work that you do! Your on line Yale course on the History of Ukraine was immensely insightful and appreciated, and highly recommended for everyone to watch! Thank you for all of your efforts!
Thank you for sharing these truths. Your knowledge, insights and compassion are so critical to the preservation of human dignity and to Democracy.
Thank you to Timothy Snyder. This article makes explicit what was troubling me about the oval office meeting, aside from the humiliation and lies. As an American born in Kansas, it is difficult for me to suss out antisemitism. My husband, a hidden child during the holocaust, has no such problem. He identified it, and Timothy Snyder has explained it.