A novel that received Australia’s highest literary award has strained relations between Australia’s Jewish and Ukrainian communities.
Helen Demidenko recently won the Miles Franklin Prize for “The Hand that Signed The Paper,” which tells the story of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine from the perspective of a Ukrainian SS collaborator.
A controversy has erupted in part because in the book, central characters make numerous anti-Jewish comments. Also, the author has claimed in interviews that “Jewish Bolsheviks” killed her grandfather.
After the prize was awarded, a Sydney doctor, who was close to the writer for whom the prize was named, called the book `an apologia for an ethnic group accused of horrific crimes against the Jews during the Holocaust.”
Dr. Ben Haneman added that Franklin would have vigorously opposed any suggestion that the book which won the prize this year could be considered literature.
Haneman said the book is “hateful and deeply offensive.”
A Holocaust expert and historian, Jacques Adler of the Melbourne University history department, said the work “simply and dishonestly evades the historical realities.”
“The travesty of history at this work’s core is that it is an apologia for genocide,” Adler said.
Other critics described the work as a native attempt at presenting the “other side” of the Holocaust through the voices of “modern East European Fascism.”
However, some supported the decision to honor the novel, calling the book “unsparing,” “a work of powerful literary imagination” and “a fine book, one that few others would dare to write.”
Leading members of the Ukrainian community here fueled the debate when they defended the text on the grounds that “all our hands are stained with blood” and “the terrible events that occurred on the territory of Ukraine during WWII were the almost inevitable consequence of a history of mutual conflict between the two communities that went back for centuries.”
Demidenko herself said she has “a strong instinct for seeking the truth at the bottom of a collection of facts” and that most of her father’s family, including her grandfather, “were killed by Jewish Communist Party officials.”
She added that she preferred “her method” of dealing with the Holocaust to war crimes trials because “people do become entrapped by historical circumstances into committing appalling acts.”
The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations issued a news release after well-known American lawyer Alan Dershowitz entered the debate. But the group did not take a hard line stance about the book’s contents.
Dershowitz described the book as “one of the most pernicious and mean-spirited works of fiction.” He argued that the book failed because it excludes any consideration of historical or institutional anti-Semitism in the Ukraine.
The news release by the Ukrainian organization said: “While historically some Ukrainians abused Jews and in some instances some Jews abused Ukrainians, it is unreasonable and not in the public interest to make unsubstantiated and derogatory generalizations about one ethnic group or the other.”
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s stance on the situation was that “multiculturalism could not be based on rewriting history” and that the initial responses by Ukrainian organizations had done serious damage to relations between the communities.
The council’s president, Isi Leibler, said Jewish communal organizations and leaders were not involved in the initial criticisms of her book, which had come instead “from individual commentators who were not Jewish.”
He added that the claim that “all our hands are stained with blood” is outrageous.
Leibler also said he has written to the head of the Australian Ukrainian organization, saying he rejected the idea of a national conference on the issue but agreed to a meeting between the organizations’ leaders.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
