MARCH 10 • 2022 | 21

One liberal Jewish 
activist suggested 
giving this shirt, 
produced by the 
rabbinic human 
rights group Truah, to 
Ukrainian President 
Volodymyr Zelensky, 
who favors T-shirts.

continued on page 22

victims of the Nazi genocide, 
lacked the bravery needed to 
survive, or that a Jewish pres-
ident should be remarkable in 
a country where, not so long 
ago, more than 1.5 million Jews 
flourished.
Those embedded meanings 
are exactly why Zelensky’s lead-
ership has been so inspiring 
to Jews, according to Ben M. 
Freeman, the author of the 2021 
book Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a 
People.
Freeman suggested the 
adulation of Zelensky was an 
antidote to the “Jews went like 
lambs to the slaughter” alle-
gation that haunted survivors 
after the Holocaust.
“Jewish people are resilient. 
Jewish people fight back. Jewish 
people have always resisted. 
And I think many Jewish peo-
ple feel that this is a continua-
tion of that,
” Freeman told JTA. 
He added, “There’s layers of 
Jewish resilience, but there’s also 
the rewriting of the Ukrainian 
Jewish relationship — not 
rewriting it to erase the past 
because we cannot — kind of 

helping us move forward.
”
Before becoming Ukraine’s 
president in 2019, Zelensky was 
a comedian, and his meteoric 
rise from just another world 
leader to beacon of democracy 
has elicited its share of jokes 
this week.

“
As a Ukrainian-Jewish 
man, I’m getting a little con-
cerned that Zelensky is setting 
some unachievable standards 
of behavior,
” tweeted Sam 
Biederman, a public relations 
professional in New York City. 
Fox tweeted about Zelensky’s 
height, 5′ 7″, and called him “an 
inspiration to short Jews every-
where.
”
But many others say they see 
in his leadership serious, and 
gratifying, implications for Jews 
in Ukraine and beyond.
For one thing, many see 
Zelensky’s success as a turn-
ing point in the history of 
Jews in Ukraine.

Russians Bomb Babyn Yar

On March 2, the morning after Russian bombs fell 
at the site of a 1941 massacre of Ukrainian Jews, 
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on 
the world’s Jews to speak out about what is hap-
pening in his country.
Russia’s attack adjacent to 
Babyn Yar, the Kyiv site where 
Nazis and local collaborators 
executed tens of thousands 
of Jews during the Holocaust, 
along with its bombing several 
days ago of Uman, the Ukrainian 
city where hundreds of thou-
sands of Jewish pilgrims visit 
each year, represent an attempt 
to erase Ukraine’s history and 
identity, Zelensky said in a 
speech delivered after another 
night of heavy fighting.
“Addressing all the Jews of 
the world: Don’t you see why this happening? 
That is why it is very important that millions of 
Jews around the world do not remain silent right 
now. Nazism is born in silence,” Zelensky said. “So 
shout about the killings of civilians. Shout about 
the killings of Ukrainians.”
Jews and Jewish groups around the world have 
stepped in to support Ukrainian Jews, who num-
ber between 43,000 and over 300,000, depend-
ing on how the estimate is made. Many of those 
Jews have joined an exodus of refugees pouring 
over the country’s borders.
In the eight-minute address, which his office 
published with English subtitles and in Hebrew 
translation, Zelensky did not mention that he him-
self is Jewish or that his own family members were 
killed by Nazis.
But his anguish over seeing a Holocaust killing 
site attacked was palpable, as he described how 
a TV station and sports complex had under Soviet 
rule been “built on the bones” of people murdered 
there “to erase the true history of Babyn Yar.”
To Russia, he said, “You are killing Holocaust vic-
tims for the second time.”
Babyn Yar, formerly known as Babi Yar, is the 
name of a ravine on Kyiv’s outskirts where 
German troops murdered, with help from 
and Ukrainian collaborators, at least 
33,000 Jews in September 1941 in 

Ukrainian President 
Volodymyr 
Zelensky spoke 
directly to the 
world’s Jews during 
an address March 
2 from his bunker 
in Kyiv.

 SCREENSHOT FROM FACEBOOK VIA JTA

 SCREENSHOT

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