Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 20 – Russia’s treatment
of the Crimean Tatars since the Anschluss a year ago recalls that of Hitler’s
Germany between 1933 and 1938 when the authorities did everything they could to
show that the Jews were not welcome and should immediately leave for other
countries, according to Karl Volokh, a Kyiv-based commentator.
At one point, he writes, Hitler even
appealed to the international community to accept Jewish emigres from Germany,
and when it refused, he concluded that the only option left was the Holocaust.
That analogy is especially frightening to the Crimean Tatars given the
harassment they are being subjected to now (szona.org/polozhenie-krymskih-tatar-ochen-napominaet-usloviya-yudefraj-v-germanii/).
Volokh says that he is recalling
these parallels now because “the current situation of Crimeans in the occupied
peninsula” recalls the intentional efforts of Germany to “intentionally drive
out a national minority from its homeland” by means like those Russian
occupiers are using now.
Among these, he says, are “arrests,
repressions, the destruction of the Mejlis, the approaching closure of the television
channel and much else,” all of which are clearly designed to lead the Crimean
Tatars to conclude that they would be better off if they left.
Fortunately, unlike the Jews of
Germany before World War II, the Crimean Tatars have somewhere to go: Ukraine,
which despite all its difficulties, is prepared to take in its citizens from
the occupied territories, although its ability to follow through on this is
limited by its economic problems.
But many Crimean Tatars do not want
to leave their native land just as many Jews did not want to leave Germany. But
as the situation deteriorates and such a trend is, Volokh says, “inevitable,”
there is a growing danger, again like with the Jews in Nazi Germany, that the Russian
occupation authorities will blame them for all problems and then act
accordingly.
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