Dame Melinda Simmons, British Ambassador to Ukraine, on antisemitism: “Call it out”
Dame Melinda Simmons, who has served as the British Ambassador to Ukraine since 2019, appeared on the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism where she spoke on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “denazification” comments, and gave advice to those looking to fight antisemitism.
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“Call it out,” she said when asked how people can tackle Jew-hatred. “That’s the one thing they can do, is to call it out. And when they ask what that means, what I say is, if you think there is a march going on, join the march. If you see something on social media, and you’re an active part of social media, you say on your social media that it’s not okay, or you’re not comfortable with it. If you see something really bad, you report it.”
Commenting on the perceived difference between antisemitic abuse in real life and online, Dame Melinda said: “If you saw someone being beaten up in the street, you would probably want to report that to the police.”
If you see the same sort of bullying going on online, you probably should be doing the same, and I’m interested that people see a distinction there because I don’t. Most of our life is lived online, in terms of that interaction now.”
Dame Melinda also spoke about how many Ukrainian Jews view President Putin’s remarks of “denazification”, one of Russia’s prominent justifications for its invasion of Ukraine.
President Putin has claimed throughout the invasion that he needed to “denazify” Ukraine, a stance that was reinforced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and apparently also adopted by China.
Asked last year why Russia needed to “denazify” Ukraine, given that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, Mr Lavrov answered: “Zelenskyy a Jew? Even Hitler had Jewish origins, the main antisemites are Jews themselves.”
Speaking on how Ukrainians have viewed this claim, Dame Melinda said: “Denazification has not been an objective for Russia. It is a narrative. In general, it’s not received with any kind of credibility here.
“Among Jews, it’s the same, and I can’t speak for all Jews in Ukraine. I have not met all Jews in Ukraine, and it’s a very disparate range of communities, but I will say that among those that I have met in Kyiv, there is the same skepticism, but there is also a thread of fear about it.
“That has a lot to do with the fact that Ukraine is the epicenter of the Holocaust. This is a country that lost nearly all of its Jews in the Holocaust. I’ve been here four years. Every town I go to, every town has a killing field. Every forest has a shooting site.”
Dame Melinda, a British Jew with Ukrainian roots who was born and raised in London’s East End, found her experiences in Ukraine eye-opening.
She said: “It’s unbelievable for someone from Western Europe to be walking around finding so much consistent evidence of killing of Jews, and that is something that runs deep even though the country has not come to terms with the same conscious, coming-to-terms with what has happened, as many Western European countries have.
“Ukraine hasn’t done that, most of Eastern Europe, frankly, hasn’t really done that yet. So for Jews who are here, who have that memory, there is always a twinge of fear about what that means.”
Considering what could happen were Russia to invade areas of Ukraine with large Jewish populations, she stated: “If [Russia] were able to come to urban centres and able to occupy, it would very quickly translate itself into the sort of antisemitism that we have seen inside Russia.”
Podcast Against Antisemitism, produced by Campaign Against Antisemitism, talks to a different guest about antisemitism each week. It streams every Thursday and is available through all major podcast apps and YouTube. You can also subscribe to have new episodes sent straight to your inbox.
Previous guests have included comedian David Baddiel, television personality Robert Rinder, writer Eve Barlow, Grammy-Award-winning singer-songwriter Autumn Rowe, and actor Eddie Marsan.
