Letter to the Editor: Lawrence M. Ginsburg

Historical perils in Mother Russia’s immediate neighborhood.

A couple of territories that Russia annexed over the 20th and current centuries are the focus of world attention. Toward the end of 1939, the Red Army invaded Finland and declared sovereignty over its peninsula (formerly known as Karelia) in a so-called “Winter War.”

Meanwhile, nearby Sweden maintained its neutrality thru World War II hostilities involving Germany, Finland and Russia.

Some 75 years later, Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula (long known as Crimea). Today, segments of Ukraine’s so-called “break-away” provinces in the Donbass region are the focus of a percolating Russian/Ukrainian war. Most recently, Hungary, a NATO full member since 1997, seems to have cast itself as a “bystander” (i.e., in its predominantly Slavic-oriented spheres of influence), albeit a quasi-Putin sympathizer.

American Jews may historically ask, how does toleration of Hungary’s current antisemitic firmament in eastern Europe parallel Sweden’s status as a “bystander” to Nazi atrocities, during World War II against Scandinavian Jews? Patriotic Jewish citizens in Finland – who mobilized themselves under the command of Field Marshall C. G. E. Mannerheim while he was charged with coordinating his nation’s mission as an ally of Germany against Russia – found it expedient to outspokenly justify many quandaries they faced.

Especially while fighting for their Fatherland’s survival vis-à-vis Nazi-inspired ideologies. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s birth post-dated the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by almost a decade. His current “double-gamesmanship” impacting the foreign policy of the United States, Israel, NATO et al. has hazardously fueled the toxicity of international anti-Semitism.

Lawrence M. Ginsburg, Atlanta