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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