‘Jews in Ukraine have become Jews of Ukraine’

GALYNA PISKORSKA, now in Melbourne after being forced to leave her country, reflects on how the Russian invasion has changed the relationship between Ukraine and its Jewish community.

Russia’s unprovoked, full-scale invasion changed my life, as it did for millions of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Jews. From February 24, 2022, civilian populations in Uman, Cherkasy, Kyiv, Dnipro, Odesa, Zhitomir, Lviv, Chernivtsi, including about 100,000 Ukrainian Jews, have been subjected to merciless missile strikes and artillery fire. This war has triggered the largest displacement crisis in Europe since WWII.

A recent report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research points to 2022 as a watershed year for both Ukrainian and Russian Jews: “if migration from these countries continues for seven years at the levels seen in 2022 and early 2023, 80%-90% of the 2021 Jewish population of Ukraine and 50%-60% of the 2021 Jewish population of Russia will have emigrated.”

“Times have changed but certain things never change”. These words from an older Jewish woman, a Ukrainian refugee, tear at my heart. “They killed us then because we were Jews. They are killing us now because we are Ukrainians.” Yes, times have changed. This war has come from the east and the Russian soldier has become the embodiment of absolute evil – an evil that Ukraine has been resisting with all its might.

The parallels with World War II are starkly present both in the news and the everyday life. My parents, historians from Kyiv, were both witnesses and participants of that war. As a child, my mum managed to survive occupation. My dad, at 18, joined the army and served as a miner with the 4^th Ukrainian front. I inherited not just their profession, but also the memory of what it takes to resist the all-powerful enemy, as well as a shared intergenerational history of suffering, resilience and survival.

My parents worked as tour guides in Kyiv all their lives. It is from them that I learned about the Holocaust. Whenever we would walk past the Kyiv puppet theatre, my dad would whisper that this used to be the Brodsky Choral synagogue where Jews hid from persecution. We would frequently go to Babyn Yar together, one of the largest mass extermination sites of what has been referred to as “the Holocaust by Bullets”. In my childhood that whole area was neglected.

Babyn Yar is the burial site of 33,000 Ukrainian Jews, yet in Soviet Ukraine, the Jewish identity of victims was erased. When the first official memorial was erected on the site in 1976, it was dedicated to the memory of murdered “peaceful Soviet citizens and prisoners of war”. A symbolic synagogue and a sculpture in the shape of a menorah were unveiled thanks to the effort and initiative of The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center only a year before the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The complicity of Ukrainian collaborators was another taboo subject never spoken about while the Soviet Union was still standing. The collaborators were urged across the occupied territories “to take care” of the local population. Still, many non-Jews lost their lives at Babyn Yar – around 100,000 people altogether, including prisoners of war, Ukrainian nationalists, gypsies, priests and the mentally ill. To speed up the process of extermination, people were put on the edge of the ravine with explosives placed around them and detonated. Mixed with soil, people would enter oblivion.

I was still in Kyiv on March 1, 2022, when three Russian missiles hit the TV tower on the territory of Babyn Yar. Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke then of the real danger of the Holocaust being repeated. He and others in Ukraine could see clear connections between the tragedy of the Holocaust and the fate of Ukraine fighting for its very survival in the face of Russia’s genocidal invasion, while acknowledging the unique status of the Holocaust in the world history.

The attack on Babyn Yar was met with the widespread condemnation. Ukraine’s Jewish community spoke powerfully against the Russian aggression. The Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Reuven Asman, made clear where the Jews of Ukraine stood – with Ukraine.

The official Russian media (there’s hardly any other media left in Russia at present) called Zelenskyy’s response an act of manipulation. After all, the Russian missiles didn’t destroy the memorial site, they “only” damaged some part of it, hit the TV tower and took five Ukrainian lives. Putin had repeatedly justified Russia’s aggression with reference to the “denazification” of Ukraine, making veiled allusions to the suffering of Ukraine’s Jewish population during World War II.

The term “denazification” in Russian propaganda was meant to evoke memories of Nazism. Bizarrely, the Kremlin tried, and failed, to convince the world that Ukraine was the modern-day equivalent of the fascist Germany.

The underlying message of that diabolical piece of propaganda was best expressed by the renowned historian Timothy Snyder: Ukrainians refusing to admit to being Russian were Nazis in the eyes of the Russian government and populace.

Any sway that Kremlin propaganda might have had has been increasingly undone by the first-hand accounts of Russia’s crimes against humanity and indiscriminate killing, kidnapping and torture of Ukrainian civilians.

They killed us then because we were Jews. They are killing us now because we are Ukrainians. I was reminded of these words when I had the honour of participating in the Holocaust Remembrance Day at Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum earlier this year. My memories of evacuating from Kyiv under the bombardments were still fresh in my mind, as were the memories of the long journey through Ukraine, Poland and Germany with a small backpack containing documents and photographs of my parents.

At Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum, I was taken aback by a question which came from one of the survivors, an intelligent and dignified man: “What’s the situation with antisemitism in Ukraine today?”

I responded then that Ukrainian Jews had always been active participants in Ukraine’s public life. Right now, Jews form a significant part of political and business elites. In Ukraine, Jewish names for children are popular among the general population. There are plenty of Jewish cultural and religious centres all through the country. In my everyday life, I said, I had not encountered antisemitism in a really long time.

As I am writing these words, I speak to an old friend. She’s still in Kyiv. Her husband is very sick, her son is in the army defending our country, her three cats are at home. Like many women across Ukraine, she spends a great deal of her time making camouflage nets for the army. This occupation helps her cope with anxiety and loss and retain some sense of inner equilibrium.  

My friend says that since the start of the full-scale invasion, non-Jewish Ukrainians often speak with heightened respect about their Jewish neighbours and compatriots because we survived attempts to erase us, managed to preserve our culture and unity, and were able to create and defend our nation-state.

In fact,  Ukraine has opened a new chapter in its Jewish history following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 2018 Pew Research Centre survey revealed that Ukraine is the country most accepting of Jews among the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Only 5% of Ukrainians who participated in the Pew survey said that they would not accept Jews as fellow citizens.

History keeps evolving and it’s not always written through the haze of the past violence and suffering. The election of the Jewish president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019, with 73% of the votes, is unprecedented for any country in Europe. Zelenskyy didn’t only pass the law against antisemitism, in the autumn of 2021 but he also supported the decision of the Ukrainian government to finance the Babyn Yar memorial centre.

There are, of course many differences between World War II and Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine, but there are stirring similarities which can’t help but touch the deepest chords of the Jewish soul: millions of refugees right across Europe and beyond, mothers rescuing their children from the bombed-out buildings, synagogues turned into bomb shelters.

Non-Jewish Ukrainians have been hiding in the mikvahs of Uman alongside their Jewish neighbours. Hasidic Jews of Ukraine have taken up arms and are fighting the common enemy with fellow Ukrainian soldiers. We don’t know how long this war will last, but we, the Jews of Ukraine, have up our sleeve the priceless historical experience we can call on.

Timothy Snyder said that reckoning with the historical experience enables people reconsider their identity: “Jews in Ukraine have become Jews of Ukraine.”

As a forcefully displaced Jewish Ukrainian, I’m eternally grateful to the people of Poland, Germany and Australia for their support of Ukraine and Ukrainians. To be welcomed with such generosity and care, to feel safe in the world as I joined millions fleeing to safety, has made me feel that the mantra of “never again”, which emerged in the wake of the Holocaust, is a powerful imperative driving communities and nation-states not to turn a blind eye to what’s happening in Ukraine.

My gratitude is bottomless and it fills my heart.

Photo: Asher, left, and David Cherkaskyi pray in their Dnipro, Ukraine, synagogue, in March 2022. The father and son enlisted to fight for Ukraine in its war against Russia. (Courtesy David Cherkaskyi via JTA).