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For the Jews, history repeats itself in Ukraine

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https://www.jns.org/opinion/for-the-jews...n-ukraine/

INTRO: The onslaught against Ukraine by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is a horrific tragedy for all Ukrainians as well as a crisis for Europe and the west in general. Nevertheless, for the Jewish people, it has special and deeply troubling resonance.

During the Holocaust, an estimated 1.2 million to 1.4 million Ukrainian Jews were slaughtered. Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s heroic president who is inspiring its resistance, is a Jew who lost relatives in that cauldron. Now Ukraine’s Jewish community, which carries a long history of trauma from waves of pogroms over the centuries, is again in terror. Jews are taking refuge in synagogues and bunkers while some have fled to Israel.

Once again, antisemitism is stalking their land. Rabbi Jonathan Markovitch and his wife Inna had been sheltering dozens of people in the basement of their Chabad-affiliated Kyiv Jewish Centre which they had stocked with food, water and fuel. But they left Ukraine within 24 hours of warnings from security officials that their lives were in danger. “They said it was safer for the community, for me and for them,” said the rabbi.

Putin’s bombs have fallen on the site of Babyn Yar where the Nazis killed tens of thousands of Jews in one of the worst single massacres of the Holocaust. As Zelensky emotionally asked, “What is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?”

The symbolism was indeed potent. But the associations of this onslaught with Jewish experience are more baleful still.

Preposterously, Putin has used the pretext of “de-Nazification” for his aggression. Accusing the Ukrainians of being Nazis and drug addicts, he claimed his invasion was “to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime.”

This is clearly ludicrous. Not only is Zelensky a Jew but so was Ukraine’s former prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman. In the 2019 general election, Zelensky gained the support of around 70% of voters. The only crime committed by democratic Ukraine is to be independent of Putin’s Russia.... (MORE - details)
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