Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on Jews around the world to speak out against Russia’s attack on his country, a day after a rocket struck near a Holocaust memorial in the capital, Kyiv.
A rocket strike struck Kyiv’s TV tower on Tuesday, killing at least five people. The tower is located near the Babin Yar Memorial, the gorge where Nazi soldiers killed up to 150,000 people during World War II, including more than 30,000 Jews who were shot there in the fall of 1941 after the Nazi conquest of Kyiv.
“For any normal person who knows history, Babin Yar is a special part of Kyiv, a special part of Europe,” Zelensky said in one of his regular video addresses throughout the war.
“This is a place of prayer and a place of remembrance for the 100,000 people killed by the Nazis… Who do you think you are to make it a target for your missiles?”
During the Soviet era, a television tower and other buildings were built on the site, but in 2016 the Ukrainian government, along with Jewish groups and philanthropists, launched a project to establish a large new Holocaust memorial center there.
Yad Vashem, the center of Holocaust remembrance in Israel, issued a “fierce condemnation” of Tuesday’s attack. Jair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, said: “We call for the sanctity of the place to be preserved and honored. However, he did not directly condemn Russia in his words.
Zelenski, who wants to garner more support from Israel as well as Jewish communities around the world, also mentioned that the city of Uman, a place of worship for orthodox Jews from the Breslov Hasidic movement, was hit on the first night of the war.
“Now I turn to all the Jews in the world – don’t you see what’s going on?” It is very important that millions of Jews around the world are not silent right now. “Nazism is born in silence,” Zelenski said.
Later Wednesday, several prominent groups representing Holocaust survivors condemned Russia’s claim that its military action in Ukraine was aimed at “denationalizing” the country.
“The signatories of this call condemn the use of the words ‘denazification’ and ‘genocide’ to justify the attack on Ukraine … We cannot accept that these words have been tarnished in this way,” said a statement signed by committee members. . of several former Nazi concentration camps, including the Auschwitz International Committee, and those in Dachau, Buchenwald-Dora, and Ravensbrück.
Under Vladimir Putin, the Soviet victory in World War II became a major building block of Russia’s national identity, and Putin sought to portray modern Russia as the heir to this proud anti-Nazi legacy, even as his government targets minorities, reduced freedoms and now an expansionist war.
Russia claims that since the Maidan revolution in 2014, Ukraine has been ruled by far-right bondage, with Putin calling the Kyiv government a “group of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”
This is despite the fact that Zelensky is a Jew and came to power after a democratic election won by incumbent President Petro Poroshenko.
A statement issued by the board of the Babin Yar Holocaust Memorial on Tuesday before the rocket strike said: “Russia is vulgarly instrumentalizing anti-Nazi rhetoric and trying to take on the role of a fighter against Nazism.
“We remind the Russian leadership that Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities were last subjected to massive bombings by Nazi Germany during World War II. Now they are burning under the blows of Putin’s army, under the false and outrageous story of “denazification” of Ukraine and its people. “
Although there is a far-right movement in Ukraine and elements of it have been active in the fight against Russian-backed forces in the east, the movement has little political power or influence over the government. The Russian government persists in telling the story of a neo-Nazi government that oppresses Russian-speakers, despite the fact that Zelensky’s native language is Russian.
“This is absolute and utter nonsense,” said Rabbi Moshe Azman, Ukraine’s chief rabbi. “The country has democracy, there is freedom of speech and the president is Jewish. This is just a lie. Far-right parties did not even enter parliament.
Born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Azman recorded an angry address to Russians and Russian Jews on Tuesday, clutching the Torah and criticizing Russia’s lack of public protest against the war.
“Remember that people who are indifferent become accomplices in crimes against humanity,” he said.