I admit to have been a bit conflicted about my support for the Ukrainian people. My father and father in law both lived in the Ukraine before the Holocaust. And they both hid out there during that time. They both had the same attitude about of the Ukrainians and the Poles. My father in law said it best along the following lines: Before the war, the Ukrainians hated the Russians and the Poles - and the feelings were mutual - they all hated each other. But the one thing they all had in common was they all hated the Jews.
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| Former PM Netanyahu and President Zelensky at a 2019 meeting in Kyiv (TOI) |
My brother – about 12 at the time - remembers a neighboring family who tried to make a run for it when the Germans invaded their town. Only to be found dead later - all cut up into pieces by the locals. Who were all too happy to do the dirty work for their German captors. With apparent glee.
This is why I have always had my doubts about post Holocaust Europe. Their hatred of our people did not begin with WWII. It has been there for many generations – passed on from father to son. I did not believe that attitude changed. Although I understood, that the Holocaust has caused that hatred to go back underground., I believed that beneath the surface nothing changed. Especially in Eastern Europe.
But a couple of things happened recently that has made me re-think those thoughts. First there was the election of a Jewish President in the Ukraine. The people who committed the abovementioned horrendous murders would have never voted for a Jew to be their leader. Volodymyr Zelensky is not only Jewish but many of his ancestors were slaughtered in the Holocaust. That a Jew was elected by the Ukrainian people is something I did not think could happen.
But then again, he was a popular Ukrainian comedian and actor who had portrayed being the President of the Ukraine on a popular TV series. And then – one month after the final episode was aired he ran for the actual position and won. Life imitates art.
Ukrainians seem to no longer care about the religious views of their leaders. They just want effective ones. They saw an effective ‘President’ on TV and believed his act. One might counter that they didn’t know he was Jewish. But in our day of instant information, I seriously doubt that.
One might also argue that it was a fluke. And that this is a ‘one and done’ Jewish President. Maybe. But I think the era of Jew hatred that so characterized pre Holocaust Eastern Europe may have come to an end. (At least for the time being.)
And the there is this. One of Putin’s publicly stated excuses for invading the Ukraine was that he wanted to ‘deNazify’ it. That prompted Zelensky to retort how ridiculous it was for Putin to suggest that the Ukraine was in ay way Nazi-like since Ukrainian President Zelensky was Jewish. Unabashedly so. but that many of his relatives were killed by Nazis in the Holocaust. TheWashington Postreports what Zelensky told former Prime Minster Netanyahu during a visit to Israel about his family - starting with the ‘four brothers:
“Three of them, their parents and their families became victims of the Holocaust. All of them were shot by German occupiers who invaded Ukraine,” he said. “The fourth brother survived. … Two years after the war, he had a son, and in 31 years, he had a grandson. In 40 more years, that grandson became president, and he is standing before you today, Mr. Prime Minister.”
After Putin's ill conceivied comment about deNazifying the Ukraine - the mainstream media immediately picked up on it – broadcasting over and over again the irony of how a country being led by a Jew could be in anyway associated with Nazism. Not only that, they have referred to him over and over again as a hero! Like n the following example:
(Zelensky’s) bravery and refusal to leave as rockets have rained down on the capital have also made him an unlikely hero to many around the world.
With courage, good humor and grace under fire that has rallied his people and impressed his Western counterparts, the compact, dark-haired, 44-year-old former actor has stayed even though he says he has a target on his back from the Russian invaders.
After an offer from the United States to transport him to safety, Zelenskyy shot back on Saturday: “I need ammunition, not a ride,” he said in Ukrainian, according to a senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation.
So what happened to the inbred antisemitism that I believed Ukrainians still have? Well, I think it still exists. But it is not as pervasive as I once thought. I believe that rural Ukraine might still harbor those feelings – at least privately. But the young new urban and educated Ukrainian appears to have rejected all that and harbors no ill feeling towards the Jewish people – or any other ethnicity or religion. They apparently look at the individual. Not their beliefs.
Generally speaking - the more educated one is, the less likely they will retain old prejudices. It is the urban educated Ukrainian that elected Zelenesky - along with a little help from his TV image. Not the rural uneducated Ukrainian that still harbors the antisemitism transmitted to him by his father.
There is also the fact that in our world today it is difficult to perpetuate the big lie for any length of time because of quick and easy access to information that disputes those lies.
Last week I said that by definition a non observant Jew cannot be accused of a Chilul HaShem. The corollary to that is that he cannot make a Kiddush Hashem either. But there are exceptions to both.
Bernie Madoff is the exception to the former. and Volodymyr Zelensky is the exception to the latter. I believe that any time a prominent individual publicly identifies as a Jew they become material for either of those two options. The world does not necessarily realize or care whether they are observant or not.
When Madoff defrauded all of his investors to the tune of billions of dollars – that was a Chilul Hashem. On the other hand that the Jewishly proud Zelensky - whose Judaism is so prominently mentioned in the media - leads his country in the heroic ways they describe, that, I think, is a Kiddush HaShem.