Monument to organizer of Jewish pogroms to be erected in Kiev

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A monument to Symon Petlyura will be erected in Kiev downtown. As Kommersant-Ukraine newspaper informs, the monument will be unveiled in the framework of events to honor the 80^th anniversary of Petlyura’s death. The monument will be erected by December 1, 2006 at the intersection of Volodimerska Street and Taras Shevchenko Avenue in Kiev downtown.

On May 16, 2005, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko signed a decree ‘On Perpetuation of the Memory of Ukrainian People’s Republic and Western-Ukrainian People’s Republic Outstanding Figures’, in which Symon Petlyura was named among outstanding figures. Ukrainian Minister of Culture and Tourism Igor Likhovoy heads organization committee on preparation and conducting of all actions, connected with commemorating Petlyura’s death.

Symon Petlyura was an active figure of the Ukrainian nationalistic movement at the beginning of the 20^th century. During the Russian Civil War he was briefly Head of Ukrainian Directory, which established nationalistic dictatorship in part of modern Ukrainian territory. During the rule of Petlyura, mass bloody pogroms were perpetrated against the Jews of Ukraine, which were labeled later by some historians as a “Holocaust rehearsal.” After the Civil War, Petlyura fled abroad. Symon Petlyura was assassinated by Ukrainian-born Jewish anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard in revenge for Jewish pogroms in Ukraine on May 25, 1926.