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From Germany May 2 1933 to Odessa May 2 2014
There are parallels between these two pitch-black episodes of European history which should never be forgotten — and they should make those who wish to send yet more weapons to Ukraine think twice, writes KEITH BARLOW
MASSACRE: The Trade Unions House of Odessa, Ukraine, during the clashes on May 2, 2014
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ON May 2 1933, exactly 91 years ago today, Hitler ordered the suppression of German trade unions and banned the German General Trade Union Federation, their central body.
He did so under the terms of the Reichstag Fire Decree passed immediately after the Reichstag fire on February 27 1933. The decree marked a key moment in the Nazi ascent to power and the suppression of any remaining opposition. Over the summer of 1933, labour leaders, especially members of the Communist and Social Democrat parties, were being rounded up for despatch to Dachau, the first concentration camp.
It is a date that we should remember today here in Britain as the legal assault on trade union freedoms becomes ever heavier. It is also a date that we should remember for another reason.
Exactly 10 years ago, on May 2 2014 — and exactly 81 years later, there was another attack on trade unionists. This was at the Trade Union Centre in Odessa.
Following the Nato-backed putsch against the elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014, people worldwide were shocked to learn of what happened in Odessa.
With the police standing by, fascist-backed mobs made a brutal arson attack on the trade union house: 48 trade unionists were burned to death and over 200 were injured.
Not only that, subsequent investigations conducted by the Council of Europe and the UN into the events in the city criticised the failures of the city authorities and emergency services to take action to stop the violence. Years later, the UN was still expressing concern that there were “no answers” to what actually happened in Odessa on that day in 2014.
These “failures” would come as no surprise given the political atmosphere in the country after the putsch in 2014. What happened in Odessa on May 2 2014, exposed the very nature of many of those who backed the putsch. It was not the perpetrators of this attack who were to be arrested, but their victims.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the massacre in Odessa. Many of those who participated in this attack in Odessa may not have been aware of what happened in Nazi Germany on that same day in 1933. However, one would have to be politically naive not to assume that on the part of the ringleaders, the actual timing of this attack on the trade union house in Odessa was more than just pure coincidence.
This massacre gives a clear insight into the likes of those who took over in the Ukraine following the putsch against Yanukovych. Communists and others on the left, as well as anti-fascists, were to be persecuted. Fascists and other reactionary elements have been able to organise freely, enter government service and become embedded in the country’s security forces.
Those associated with the previous democratically elected government have been persecuted. The Communist Party has been liquidated and most other left-wing parties declared illegal. Many of their members remain in prison. Monuments to those who resisted fascism in the last war have been destroyed and any commemoration of those who lost their lives has been banned.
None of this justifies Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet it should make those who wish to place more weapons in the hands of the present Ukrainian government, stop and think.
Weapons deliveries will not put an end to the war. Only peace negotiations will — and it is to Britain’s shame that our former prime minister Boris Johnson, as reported in the Guardian on April 3 2022, played a key role in aborting the peace negotiations which indicated agreement on the main heads of discussion.
The memories of May 2 1933 and of those who died just 10 years ago on May 2 2014 should spur trade unionists in particular to raise the issue of peace and to question the role of our own government in boosting military expenditure to unprecedented peacetime levels.
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