MARCH 31 • 2022 | 7

Ukrainian capital. I had read 
a great deal about what was 
perpetrated at BabynYar, 
the ravine in Kyiv where in 
September 1941 more than 
30,000 Jews were murdered in 
two days, but never expected 
to stand there. 
As soon as we arrived 
in Kyiv, however, I noted 
the complex and conflicted 
relationships faced by those 
seeking traces of Jewish life. 
Concerned mostly with the 
past, we were faced with a 
city scarred by reminders of 
recent history in the mak-
ing. Independence Square 
had always been a gathering 
place for celebrations, like 
our Times Square, but in 
2013-14 it was the site of 
anti-government protests 
after the country’s leaders, 
under pressure from Russia, 
rejected a widely support-
ed pact between Ukraine 
and the European Union. 
Shooting erupted on Feb. 
18, and nearly 100 protesters 
and 13 police were killed. 
These events, known as the 
Revolution of Dignity, top-
pled the government and 
reasserted the Ukrainian 
desire for European democ-
racy instead of Russian 
autocracy. 

THE ‘NEW’ UKRAINE
The emergence of a new 
Ukraine, however, one hoping 
beyond hope to join NATO, 
was met with early manifes-
tations of what we are now 
witnessing. Within weeks of 
the overthrow of the Russian-
backed government in Kyiv, 
Vladimir Putin sent troops to 
Crimea and began supporting 
separatists in Ukraine’s east. 
The conflict between them 
and the Ukrainian army was 
still raging when we arrived 
in the summer of 2016.
On our visit to 
Independence Square, we 
viewed memorials to those 

who died during the February 
revolution. Further up a hill 
that frames the square was a 
long wall of photographs in 
tribute to fallen soldiers on 
the Ukraine-Russia border. 
There were hundreds — as 
well room for many, many 
more. Looking at the mostly 
young faces on that wall, 
none of us could have imag-
ined that they represented 
just the first rippling of the 
deadly wave that now engulfs 
their countrymen.
And while our quest for 
Jewish history remained cen-
tral to our travels, encoun-
ters at museums and sites 
in Kyiv reminded us that 
Jewish life there had not 
existed in a vacuum. Signs 
of the country’s tragic past 
were everywhere. We visited 
the powerful museum to the 
Holodomor, the deliberate 
famine ordered by Joseph 
Stalin which took the lives of 
some 3 million Ukrainians. 
We also contemplated 
the gigantic Motherland 
Monument, 50 feet taller than 
the Statue of Liberty, whose 
sword-bearing figure holds 
a shield emblazoned with 
the communist hammer and 
sickle — a “gift” from the 
Breshnev era which many 
have called to be dismantled. 
At Babyn Yar the story was 
doubly tragic, as for decades 
the fate of the murdered 
Jews had been erased, with 
an enormous Soviet-era 
statue memorializing only 
the “victims of fascism.” A 
menorah-shaped monument 
near the site was erected in 
1991, 50 years after the mas-
sacre, but what some have 
termed a high-tech Holocaust 
Disneyland is now being built 
nearby — and according to 
Ukrainian reports, several 
Russian missiles have struck 
near the area. 
Thinking about Babyn Yar 
and of Ukraine’s desperate 

plight, I keep returning to 
one realization: the land now 
being fought over, what his-
torian Timothy Snyder terms 
Europe’s bloodlands, was 
both home and hell for the 
Jews who lived there. Decades 
before Hitler, many thou-
sands had been murdered 
by Ukrainian nationalists in 
waves of pogroms between 
the 1880s and the 1920s, vic-
tims of the persistent violence 
that convinced those like my 
great-grandfather to seek 
a better life, a safer life, in 
America. As for the genocidal 
complicity of their Ukrainian 
neighbors in small cities and 
towns during the Holocaust, 
that remains another blood-
soaked stain on Jewish mem-
ory of these strife-ridden 
lands. 
The dual catastrophe of 
Hitler and Stalin, howev-
er, could not extinguish 
Ukrainian longings for auton-
omy and freedom. Nor could 
the darkness of the 20th 
century snuff out Jewish life 
in a land where it had flour-
ished for a thousand years. 
Before the war — the current 
war — an estimated 350,000 
to 400,000 Jews resided in 
Ukraine, the fifth-largest 
community in the Jewish 
world, though many have 
fled to Israel and other places 
of refuge. Who knows how 
many will return. 
At least the election — 
and heroic leadership — of 
Jewish president Volodymyr 
Zelensky offers a glimmer 
in the darkness. Will the 
world continue to support a 
free Ukraine, one capable of 
facing its troubled past while 
striving for a brighter future? 
Time may tell, but history 
will judge. 

Robert Franciosi is a professor in 

the Department of English Language 

and Literature at Grand Valley State 

University. 

‘Beacon of Strength’

Regarding “Beacon of Strength” 
in the March 10 Detroit Jewish 
News, I met Alan Yost along 
with the Congregation Beth 
Achim team at the initial 
meeting with the Adat Shalom 
Synagogue team for merger dis-
cussions in 1998. 
The merger was a resounding 
success in no small part due to 
Alan’s efforts in unifying the 
membership of both congrega-
tions. 
Those of us that took part in 
the merger effort know Alan’s 
incredible work within Adat 
Shalom to welcome the Beth 
Achim family as if they were 
always members of the Adat 
Shalom family.
The teams and united 
members within Adat Shalom 
Synagogue wish Alan a yasher 
koach and, along with Beverly, a 
long and happy retirement.

— Ed Kohl 

West Bloomfield

Proud of Carl Levin’s 
Role in Ukraine 

Over 30 years ago, in January 
of 1992, the late Sen. Carl Levin 
traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine, to 
ensure that the nuclear missiles 
stored there were dismantled. 
 Many times, it is years after 
something positive is done that 
we see the benefit. Sen. Carl 
Levin, may his memory be for a 
blessing.

— Joel E. Jacob 

West Bloomfield 

‘We Didn’t Do Enough’

Thanks so much for the excel-
lent series of articles, “Standing 
with Ukraine,” including ‘
A 
Modern Maccabee,” about 
Ukrainian President Zelensky, 
in the March 10 Jewish News. 

letters

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