The war in Ukraine has stirred old arguments over history

MOUNT OF REMEMBRANCE on the western edge of Jerusalem is encircled by thousands of trees, many with a sign naming a person and a country. The Avenue of the Righteous among the Nations, a project begun in 1962 by Yad Vashem, Israel’s national authority for Holocaust remembrance, links to the museum and monuments commemorating the extermination of Europe’s Jews, many of them in Ukraine.Recognition as a Righteous Gentile, a great honour, granted mainly posthumously, to non-Jews who risked their lives to try to save Jews from deportation and murder during the Holocaust, is a laborious procedure. Each case is carefully vetted by a committee of historians chaired by a judge on Israel’s Supreme Court. But in recent years the process has become more controversial and political, as various governments seek to build self-serving national narratives. Some highlight their citizens who saved Jews, but ignore or even deny the many cases of those who collaborated with the Nazis.