It’s time for Jews to stop being so nice to the Russians.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has appealed to Jewish people across the world to speak out against the Russian assault on his country, a day after a missile hit close to a Holocaust memorial site in the capital, Kyiv.
The missile strike on Tuesday hit Kyiv’s television tower, reportedly killing at least five people. The tower is located close to the memorial site of Babyn Yar, the ravine where Nazi soldiers massacred up to 150,000 people during the second world war, including more than 30,000 Jews, who were shot there in the autumn of 1941 after the Nazi takeover of Kyiv.
“For any normal person who knows history, Babyn Yar is a special part of Kyiv, a special part of Europe,” said Zelenskiy, in one of the regular video addresses he has been making throughout the war.
“It is a place of prayer and a place of remembrance for the 100,000 people killed by the Nazis … Who do you think you are, to make it a target for your missiles?”
During the Soviet period a television tower and other buildings were constructed on the site, but in 2016 the Ukrainian government along with Jewish groups and philanthropists launched a project to create a major new Holocaust memorial centre there.
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance centre in Israel, issued a “vehement condemnation” of Tuesday’s attack. Yair Lapid, the Israeli foreign minister, said: “We call for the sanctity of the site to be preserved and honoured.” However, he did not directly condemn Russia in his words.
Zelenskiy, keen to rally more support from Israel and also from Jewish communities worldwide, also mentioned that the city of Uman, a pilgrimage site for Orthodox Jews from the Hasidic Breslov movement, was hit on the first night of the war.
“I am now addressing all the Jews of the world – don’t you see what is happening? It is very important that right now, millions of Jews around the world do not remain silent. Nazism is born in silence,” said Zelenskiy.
Is that some play on “Democracy dies in darkness”?
Nazis were pretty loud, in general.
This is all so goofy.
But I would like for Jews to become even more vocal than they already are in attacking White Christian Russia.
I would like the lines to be clear.