This is not just a dispute about Andriy Melnyk.

It is not only about Yad Vashem.

And it is not only about the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets placing Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, into its database after Yad Vashem and Israel’s Foreign Ministry criticized Ukraine’s state reburial of Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk.

This story is bigger than one ceremony, one statement, or one controversial historical figure.

It is a conflict of two traumas.

Ukraine speaks from its own pain: war, Russian missiles, occupation, destroyed cities, and decades of Soviet and Russian propaganda that tried to describe almost every Ukrainian struggle for independence as “Nazism.”

Israel speaks from its own pain: the Holocaust, the destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, the memory of millions of murdered Jews, and the deep sensitivity to state honors granted to figures connected with the era of the Second World War.

Both traumas are real.

That is exactly why this story cannot be reduced to a primitive formula: “Ukraine is right and Israel is wrong,” or “Israel is right and Ukraine is wrong.”

The real question is harder: can Ukraine and Israel speak about the most painful chapters of history without allowing Russia to turn memory into another weapon of war?

What Myrotvorets Wrote

On the Myrotvorets page, the inclusion of Dani Dayan is explained with an extremely harsh accusation: “conscious systematic actions aimed at inciting interethnic and interstate hostility between Israel and Ukraine.”

The page also accuses him of participating in “acts of humanitarian aggression against Ukraine,” spreading “Russian-fascist propaganda narratives,” and participating in information provocations against Ukraine.

The reason for this, according to the page, was Yad Vashem’s reaction to the reburial of Andriy Melnyk.

Myrotvorets quotes the episode as follows:

“On 25.05.2026, during the reburial of the remains of the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Andriy Melnyk, ❗️who during the Second World War protected Jews from fascists and pogroms, ❗️ and his wife Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, Yad Vashem commented on this event as follows: ‘The reinterment of Andriy Melnyk for a state burial in Ukraine raises serious concerns. Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance.’”

“On 25.05.2026, during the reburial of the remains of the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Andriy Melnyk,

❗️who during the Second World War protected Jews from fascists and pogroms, ❗️

and his wife Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, Yad Vashem commented on this event as follows: ‘The reinterment of Andriy Melnyk for a state burial in Ukraine raises serious concerns. Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance.’”

That quote is important.

Not because it settles the historical debate. It does not.

It is important because it shows that the dispute is not only about today’s ceremony. It is also about the very historical framing of Melnyk.

For the authors of the Myrotvorets page, Melnyk is presented as a Ukrainian figure unfairly demonized through a Soviet-Russian lens.

For Yad Vashem, the central issue is different: the connection between the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Nazi Germany, the political context of World........

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