How Russia turned Hitler Jewish

At the end of an unassuming side street in Vilnius is Lithuania’s only Holocaust museum. Set in a ramshackle wooden building with a buzzer on the door, The Green House has fought an uphill struggle to memorialise the fate of the 250,000-strong Jewish community that once called the former Soviet Republic home. Murdered by the Third Reich’s brutal Einsatzgruppen execution squads, worked to death in labour camps or killed by their own neighbours, around 90 per cent of the historic population was wiped out in the Holocaust.

Those who survived, however, were offered little relief when the Red Army rolled through the Baltics. Viewed as different and ideologically suspect, thousands of Jewish craftsmen, skilled workers and their families were deported by Communist authorities to the Gulags of the Far East, forced to labour in freezing conditions and fish in the ice to survive.

Yet their tragic history was all but wiped from the record by Soviet officials, replaced by a rose-tinted view of how the USSR vanquished the Nazis and ushered in peace in Europe. Unlike other museums in the country, The Green House does not lay the blame for the crimes solely on the Germans, pointing out that much of the violence was unleashed by ordinary Soviet citizens, drawing ire at home and praise from abroad.

Just last month, up the road in the forest of Panerai, where tens of thousands of Jews were shot and their bodies burned by the Nazis, a monument to the slaughter was vandalised with the “Z” symbol that has come to represent support for Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s bloody war in Ukraine. Since the start of the war in February, it seems that Jewishness has ebbed closer to the line of fire.

For months, Moscow has been trying to square the circle in its argument that Ukraine is in thrall to “neo-Nazis” when its leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, is Jewish. In fiery comments to reporters earlier this month, the country’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, declared that even Adolf Hitler himself “had Jewish blood.”

This startling revisionism has already sparked outcry on the world stage, with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid hitting back at the “terrible historical error” and demanding an apology. According to Lapid, “the lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism,” stressing that “Hitler was not of Jewish origin, and Jews did not kill themselves during the Holocaust.” Russia’s ambassador in Jerusalem was summoned to explain the remarks, while Lavrov’s Ukrainian counterpart, Dymtro Kuleba, hit out at the “deeply-rooted antisemitism of Russian elites.”

Yet instead of retracting or correcting the record, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry doubled down on the claims, publishing a lengthy and one-sided rant in a social media post aimed at their “crafty” critics. “Throughout history,” Russian officials claim, “unfortunately, there are tragic examples of cooperation between Jews and the Nazis.” Citing the existence of the Judenrat – the Jewish councils forced to implement the directives of their oppressors in the ghettoes during the Holocaust – Moscow’s diplomats alleged that Zelenskyi is repeating history and using his identity to protect “the spiritual and blood heirs of the executioners of his people.”

Of course, no as-yet unseen documents to prove Hitler was secretly of Jewish descent were produced, and Lavrov’s bizarre assertions were glossed over completely. Instead, Moscow proclaimed the Soviet Union was “the saviour of the Jewish world” for its role in liberating the concentration camps of Eastern Europe. Once again, Russia put forward its own version of history, having never reckoned with its own dark role in victimising those who survived the Nazi death camps only to be sent to the USSR’s own Gulags. When it comes to the past, in Moscow, nuance is never welcome.

Now, Ukraine’s Jewish community is paying the price of Russia’s saviour complex. Told that Putin’s forces are there to “de-Nazify” the country, one synagogue in the city of Uman has found itself accused by the Kremlin’s top brass of storing weapons for “nationalist forces.” Again, no evidence has been produced, and one local told Haaretz that “nobody is using synagogues for reasons except for the reasons synagogues should be used.” For others, “liberation” has meant they are forced to flee their homes, packing their possessions and moving to neighbouring nations like Moldova. Thousands of Jews have already made their way across the border, seeking refuge in synagogues and community centres.

While the plight of Ukrainian Jews has been largely underreported, the latest round of historical musings has put Moscow on a collision course with Israel. In their statement, Russian diplomats accused Jerusalem of supporting “the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev,” despite the Middle Eastern nation having previously avoided directly confronting Russia and refusing to sanction oligarchs with links to the Kremlin.

Ultimately, Putin was forced to put an end to the growing diplomatic row, apologising to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on a bilateral call. While widely interpreted as a rebuke to Lavrov, it likely would have passed without comment were Israel not a key partner that Moscow needs to keep as neutral as possible when it comes to the war. The hatchet might be buried, but it shows just how easily the Kremlin and top officials are prepared to reinvent history to paint their predecessors as heroes.

In a speech to the Knesset in March, a visibly frustrated Zelenskyi urged lawmakers to do more, saying “one can keep asking why we can’t get weapons from you… why you don’t put pressure on Russian business. But it is up to you, dear brothers and sisters, to choose the answers.” However, his assertion that “Ukrainians made their choice 80 years ago, they rescued Jews,” gave rise to criticism abroad, with officials in Jerusalem rebuking him for himself playing down the role Ukrainians played in the Holocaust and seemingly equating the current crisis to the incomparable horrors of the past.

Russia, though, clearly has no misgivings about using that history to justify a war that has put Jews, and other Ukrainians, in the crosshairs – all while blaming them for their own slaughter.