Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has been going on for almost three years. Its destructive impact has been felt by all Ukrainians – Jews and non-Jews alike. How much longer the largest war in Europe in the last 80 years will continue was discussed at the 5th Kyiv Jewish Forum, which recently took place in Washington.
The Jerusalem Post was a partner of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine in organizing this international summit.We asked Borys Lozhkin, president of the JCU, vice president of the World Jewish Congress and the European Jewish Congress, to share his impressions of what he heard at the forum and to sum up the outgoing year for the Jewish community of Ukraine.
What is the mood of Ukrainian Jews as 2024 comes to a close, and what do they expect in 2025?The mood is the same as with all Ukrainians: to stand firm. It is easy for Israelis to imagine the situation Ukrainians are in, since Israel has been in a state of war for almost 76 years since its independence.
However, for representatives of other countries, unless they are from the former Soviet bloc, it is not as easy to understand against whom Ukraine is defending itself. We are in Europe, and Israelis are in the Middle East.Today, we are confronting a threat that the world has not faced since World War II, and we must win.
Ukrainians and Israelis have no other option. As Golda Meir said: “Our enemies want to destroy us, and we want to live. This does not leave much room for compromise.” This statement applies to the situation in both Ukraine and Israel.
You mentioned Golda Meir. She was born in Kyiv, wasn’t she?She was. Meir is not the only person born in Ukraine who made a significant contribution to the formation and development of Israel. But her example is perhaps one of the most eloquent. In January of this year, the JCU organized the distribution of the Ukrainian version of the film Golda about Israel’s fourth prime minister.
In addition, we also published Golda Meir’s memoirs, My Life, in Ukrainian for the first time.They were published as part of the Jewish Library book series created by the JCU. For this series, we select works about Jews and Israel that have become worldwide bestsellers but have not previously been published in Ukrainian. The Jewish Library is publishing these Ukrainian translations for the first time.
In 2021, the series was launched with Daniel Gordis’s book Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn. To date, five books have already been published in the Jewish Library. They are in great demand in Ukraine. Ukrainians want to know more about the history and culture of the Jews, with whom they have lived for more than a thousand years.
One of the books in the series, Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service, by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal, has been a bestseller on the Ukrainian book market for two consecutive years. This year, we have released a sequel, The Mossad Amazons – The Amazing Women in the Israeli Secret Service; Rise and Kill First, by Ronen Bergman, which will also be published very soon.
Next, Natan Sharansky’s autobiographical story of the fight against the Soviet regime, Fear No Evil, will be published. Although the famous Soviet dissident and major Israeli political figure wrote it in the late 1980s, it has never been published in Ukrainian. The Jewish Library will be the first to do it. There will be other books, too.
I am confident that increasing awareness among Ukrainians about Jews and Israel will help reduce antisemitism. In Ukraine, fortunately, it [the incidence of antisemitism] is already among the lowest in Europe. Let’s return to the Kyiv Jewish Forum.
For the second year in a row, the menorah destroyed by the Russians became the central element of the forum. Tell us more about it. The mutilated menorah, in my opinion, is one of the symbols of this war. The monument is located in Drobitsky Yar on the outskirts of my native Kharkiv.
In this ravine, in late 1941 and 1942, the Nazis shot 20,000 Jews – prisoners of the Kharkiv Ghetto. After Babi Yar, Drobitsky is the second-largest execution site of Jews in Ukraine. The construction of the memorial was supervised by Righteous Among the Nations member Stanislav Ishchenko.
Together with his father, Joseph, he saved more than 300 Jews during the Holocaust. Stanislav died shortly before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion and did not see what the Russians did to his menorah in March 2022. He also did not hear the absurd accusations against Ukrainians of Nazism.
It was not the Ukrainians who shelled the burial site of tens of thousands of Holocaust victims. It was not Ukrainians who killed Boris Romanchenko, a prisoner of Nazi concentration camps, in Kharkiv. Vanda Obiedkova from Mariupol survived the Holocaust 80 years ago.
But in 2022, she died in the basement of a destroyed house from hunger and cold, trying to escape from Russian shells and missiles. A member of the Kharkiv Hillel, Seraphim Sabaransky died defending his city from the Russians.In August of 2022, the brother of my close Jewish friend died near Bakhmut.
The son of the chief rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Reuven Azman, who died at the front, was recently buried. Igor Tish, a former pupil of the Kyiv Jewish school and an IDF reservist, was seriously wounded. Unfortunately, there are numerous such examples.
Thousands of Jews, including Israeli citizens, are fighting in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Jews are dying at the front and in the rear. Therefore, talking about the de-Nazification of Ukrainians, as Russian propaganda presents it, is simply absurd.
Jews are not killed by Ukrainians. Ukrainian Jews are part of the Ukrainian political nation. And they, like all Ukrainians, have a single goal, which I have already mentioned: to win in order to continue living together in a peaceful Ukraine.
We will definitely restore the Drobitsky Yar menorah. But at the same time, we will preserve the traces of its mutilation as a reminder of this war. This will be a memorial dedicated to two tragedies: the Holocaust of World War II and the Russian invasion of the 21st century. The Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, together with the Kharkiv City Hall, has already selected the project for its future restoration.
Can 2025 bring peace?It is not only up to the Ukrainians. In 2022, few in the world believed that Ukraine would last more than three days. The third year of the most active phase of the war is ending. But I want to remind you that the Russian-Ukrainian war has been going on for almost 11 years. I would like to see a complete end to the war in 2025. What it will look like depends largely on the partners.
Do you mean the US?The outcome rests on other partners as well, but primarily it depends on the US. Both Ukraine and Israel rely on American support. That is why we held the Kyiv Jewish Forum in Washington immediately after the presidential and congressional elections.
The position of President-elect Donald Trump will largely determine further relations in the US, Ukraine, and Israel and, more broadly, in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. This influence is already being felt, although there are several weeks before the inauguration.
The speakers and guests of the forum were considering possible scenarios for the further development of our conflicts. Physically, they may seem local, but in fact they are global in nature. The Israelis hope for the continuation of the Abraham Accords and the neutralization of the Iranian threat, including proxy formations.
The Ukrainians also are counting on decisive actions by the United States, which will allow the war to end on terms favorable to Ukraine. We will find out how it will be in practice after January 20.
Another topic that the Kyiv Jewish Forum touched on was the sharply increased level of antisemitism. How did it happen that after Oct. 7, Ukraine turned out to be almost the only country in Europe where there were no anti-Israeli and antisemitic demonstrations?The answer here also lies in our wars. The Hamas attack on Israel reminded Ukrainians of the morning of February 24, 2022, when the entire country woke up to rocket fire, and columns of Russian troops crossed the border. The massacre in Re’im and other kibbutzim near Gaza reminded us of the tragedies of Bucha and Mariupol.
Ukrainians simply could not take the position of terrorists. Therefore, 69% supported Israel, and only 1% were against. What began to happen on university campuses in the US and Europe after Oct. 7 and eventually resulted in a pogrom in Amsterdam bypassed Ukraine.
Today, the wars in Ukraine and Israel are between the forces of democracy and those of tyranny. Most of the speakers at the Kyiv Jewish Forum emphasized this. I completely agree. In order to prevent the world from returning to times when order was established by brute force, Ukrainians and Israelis need help, and it has to be timely and sufficient to achieve two convincing victories. Hopefully, in 2025 we will be able to say with relief that the danger is already behind us.
This article was written in cooperation with the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine.