Russian Jews: Their Background and Escape to Israel

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                       

The world is made of 7 Continents:  
1. ASIA: 50 countries with 60% of world population
    17,212,000 sq miles large
2. AFRICA: 54 countries
3. NORTH AMERICA: 23 countries
4. SOUTH AMERICA: 12 countries
5. ANTARTICA
6. EUROPE: 51 countries,  3,930,000sq miles large 
7. AUSTRALIA: 14 countries, 0.3% of world population
                                                                     
                                                                   

Russia:  Lies in both Europe and Asia.  Russia is considered European.  The capitol is Moscow.  75% of the population is in Europe with 22% in Asia.  Anything west of the Ural mountains is considered European.  6,323,142 sq miles large.  (almost twice as large as Europe)
                                                           

Catherine was the name of 2 Russian Empresses.  Caherine I ruled from 1725 to 1727.  In May of 1727 she sxpelled all the Jews that were living in Little Russia.  This order was countermanded after her death.  Little Russia was an administrative body of the Russian Empire in the Hetmanate created for the first time by the ukase of Peter the Great on May 27, 1722 in place of the Little Russia Prikase.  

Then Catherine II, called Catherine the Great, ruled from 1762  when she permitted all aliens to live in Russia except Jews.  She ruled to 1796, and her Jewish policy was marked by a  combination of liberalism and coercion.  On one hand, Jews were allowed to register in the merchant and urban classes in 1780, but permission was restricted to White Russia (Belorussia) in 1786. Jews went to White Russia originally from Poland.  They were living in Grodno in the 12th century, at Brest-Litovsk in the 14th century, and at Pensk from 1506.  In eastern White Russia, Jews appeared in the 16th century, but owing to opposition from the local burghers, the communities were long unrecognized.  

Massacres happened at Polotsk in 1563, at Homel in 1659, at Mohilev , etc. in 1655.  The Jewish population suffered severely at the end of the 17th century from the Polish-Cossack and Swedish wars.  
                                                   

 This marked the beginning of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT, an area Jews had to live in as they were kept out of all other areas.  It was their confinement.  This happened during her last years, which were marked by reaction from 1789 to 1796. It was instituted in 1791.    She prevented the extension of Jewish settlement and in 1795, prohibited Jewish residence in even the rural areas.  25 provinces made up the Pale of Settlement of Czarist Russia which was itself made up of Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia -Belarus (Moldova and Ukraine),  and Crimea, where Jews were permitted permanent residence.  Permission to live outside its confines was granted only to certain groups who had to be members of the liberal professions with a high school diploma.  They would have been the big businessmen, skilled artisans, and ex-Cantonists. 

CANTONISTS were Jewish children who were conscripted to military institutions in czarist Russia with the intention that the conditions in which they were placed would force them to adopt Christianity. The "cantonist units" were properly barracks (cantonments) established for children of Russian soldiers. They provided instruction in drill and military training, as well as a rudimentary education. Discipline was maintained by threat of starvation and corporal punishment. At the age of 18 the pupils were drafted to regular army units where they served for 25 years. Enlistment for the cantonist institutions, which originated in the 17^th century, was most rigorously enforced during the reigns of *Alexander I (1801–25) and *Nicholas I (1825–55). It was abolished in 1856 under *Alexander II.

The fate of Jews ever found outside the Pale without permission depended on the arbitrary decision of the local governor.  The borders of the Pale were restricted from time to time arbitarily by the oppressive "Statute Concerning the Jews." of 1835.  By 1882, under the MAY LAWS, Jews were excluded from rural areas inside the Pale.  As a result of these restrictions, Jewish economic development was severely hampered.  The Pale was abolished in effect in August 1915 but legally in March 1917 by the end of World War I.  

Jews immigrated to the USA in 3 waves:  The European Ashkenazi group  arrived " between 1880 and the onset of restrictive immigration quotas in 1924 with over 2 million Jews from Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Romania."   

In the 1880's many European Jews immigrated to the USA.  Almost all the records say they were from Russia, and that was all.  We have to really dig to find out what part of Russia, and usually it was somewhere in the Pale.  Our grandfather, Nathan Goldfus/Goldfoot b: 1871, came over from Telsiai, Kovno, Lithuania  through a trip through England, Ireland, Canada and then finally landing in Council, Idaho marrying our grandmother, Zlata Jermulowskey from Lazdijai, Seinai,Suwalki, Lithuania/Poland.  They married in Boise, Idaho in 1905.  

The family of Louis Eskovitz Iskowitz Eskowitz Eskowitz b: 1875 in Russia and wife  Rose Kupper b: 1886 in Russia had to pay a guide to get them and their children; Chester, Baili, Leonard, Morris,   Dora, Fanny and Nat out of Russia.  The guide led them out at night between 1905 and 1906.  It became cloudy and they couldn't see each other.  One of the children let go of their parent's hands and the parent couldn't find it again.  They were panicking.  Finally, the parent had the little one and they were able to continue and cross over the line.  tt's hard to understand that they weren't allowed to leave. Nat, the youngest, told me this story several times.  His cousin became the rabbi who started Boy's Town in Jerusalem.                        

At Babi Yar, a ravine ouside Kiev where almost 34,000 Jews were killed in September 1941.The horror of the massacre together with the fact that no memorial was erected until the 1980s in memory of the Jewish victims turned Babi Yar into a symbol of anti-Semitism.  

                                                     
  It is estimated that more than half of the 6 million Jews of the Holocaust  died directly as a result of the Shoah and were Russian Jews. Many more emigrated to Israel, USA, Argentina, and Germany.  Communists denied any specific religious ethnicity of the dead. 

 Russia and Ukraine still have among the larger Jewish populations in the world today (440,000 in Russia; 300,000 in Ukraine.)   The Ukraine has been going through their own battle with Russia lately.  They do not want to be a part of Russia again.  

Russia had turned into the  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 30 December 1922 to 26 December 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized.and back to Russia again.  They may have called it a socialist state but the world considered it a Communist State.  
                                                    

       Golda Meir was the newly appointed ambassador to the USSR in 1948 from Israel and she visited the GREAT SYNAGOGUE in Moscow during the Succot holiday.  She was mobbed by thousands of Jews, defying the intimidation of KGB infiltrators and the very real anger of being arrested.

I had moved to Israel in 1980 and had many Russians in my Hebrew class at the Ulpan.  They had just started allowing some Russians to leave by then, Russians that didn't matter to them.  They knew how to study a foreign language, and we didn't.  For starters, my husband and I were in a class with 40 Russians.  As we couldn't keep up, a smaller class was created for us, and get this-my husband had taught Hebrew to barmitzva preparing boys.  Conversational Hebrew was another thing.  
                                                      

Natan Sharansky b: 1948

More Jews have wanted to get out of Russia/USSR but were not allowed.  It was an atheistic country.  It had not only become a Communist state, but ended all religion for everyone.  Natan Sharansky was in prison since 1977 for trying to learn Hebrew.  He was there in 1980-81 when I was learning Hebrew in Haifa, Israel at an ulpan.  Our teacher was Sarah, and she sent him letters.  He tried to make aliyah to israel in 1973 but was refused permission as all Jews were not allowed to go there. By 1986 with the help of his wife's work and the president of the USA, he moved to Israel.    the Choral Synagogue (the only synagogue allowed to operate in Moscow) was filled with spies and the most conscious of the city’s Jews were the refuseniks who sought to leave Mother Russia forever.”
                                                   

Ukranian Jews getting out and making aliyah to Israel

Natan, THE CHAIRMAN OF THE JEWISH AGENCY FOR ISRAEL,  wrote an article for THE JERUSALEM REPORT MAGAZINE that came out in July 13, 2015.  He had a feeling that many more Jews would want to make aliyah to Israel, and it turned out that he was right.  In 1988 Natan was head of the Zionist Forum, an organization founded by aliyah activists and former prisoners of Zion.  400,000 Jews came out of Russia within the first 2 years.  
                                                    

2nd generation Russian Jews in Israel 

They found their place in Israeli society.  These Russians can boast of tremendous achievement.  They entered the hi-tech, Science, economics, the arts, sports and politics of ISRAEL.  They had to fight against the Soviet regime for the right of Jews to move to their historical homeland and had no doubt that in the end they would prevail.  
                                                    
I suppose Russia missed the Jews who left.  Something happened.  It started accepting Jews again.  I say this because I've read that " Instead of one synagogue, Moscow today is home to about 20 synagogues. The iconic Choral Synagogue has been refurbished and attracts scores of worshippers each Shabbat.
                                                       

In St. Petersburg, Jewish life has been revived as well: synagogues, a Jewish Community Center, schools, a Hillel and senior center all educate St. Petersburg’s Jews. In a city that before 1917 banned Jewish residency, public Shabbat dinners now draw crowds of Jews."

"Jews make up about 0.16% of the total population of Russia, according to the 2002 census, and Russia’s Jewish community is shrinking. Numbering 2,279,800."  Here's something also happening in the USA.  Small family sizes and high rates of assimilation and intermarriage mean that fewer Russians identify as Jews. As many as 80% of non-Orthodox Jews in Russia marry non-Jewish spouses.

Vladimir Putin likes Jews.  When he was a small child, his neighbor was an orthodox Jew.  His Jewish neighbors had him over for dinners many times and he was very appreciative as his family was very poor.  He never forgot their kindness to him. He became president in 2012.  
                                   

However, anti-Semitism has hit Russia as well.  "Despite Russia’s thriving Jewish life and pro-Jewish overtures from President Putin, Russia today is home to worrying levels of anti-Semitism. A 2015 ADL poll found that fully 23% of Russians harbor anti-Semitic views. In recent months, a series of high-profile anti-Semitic incidents has made some Russian Jews reconsider their place in Russian society." 


Resource: https://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/continents-of-the-world.html
https://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/continents-of-the-world.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collegium_of_Little_Russia_(1722%E2%80%9327)
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-immigration-to-america-three-waves/
http://www.worldometers.info/geography/largest-countries-in-the-world/
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/7-Facts-about-Jewish-Life-in-Russia-Today.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Update: 5:00pm, again at 7:15pm.  .

When It's Anti-Semitism and Not Helpful Criticism

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky was in prison in Russia  in 1980 while I was studying Hebrew in Haifa at an Ulpan for 10 months.  Our teacher was communicating with him, trying to help him learn, she told us.  I thought it was hard enough in a class with her great teaching let along learning on the sly in a Russian prison for trying to learn it in the first place.

Born in 1948, like Israel, he was a Russian Refusenik; a computer scientist by profession, and a very short man.  I saw him when he spoke in Portland, Oregon several years ago at one of our synagogues.  He had been refused permission to emigrate in 1973 to Israel.  Can you imagine having to ask permission from your government?

He then became prominent in the Jewish emigration movement in the USSR, leading to his arrest in 1977..  He was kept in solitary confinement for 18 months.  The world had heard about it and was interested, but not sure if CNN was or not.  He had a great defense, but it was Russia, and so he was sentenced in 1978 to 13 more years of prison of which he served 9.
                                                                           

Sharansky was released and phoned President Ronald Reagan and thanked him for his
part in getting him out of prison in Russia.  
His wife, "Avital Sharansky was born Natalya Shteiglitz/Steiglitz in 1950, in the Ukraine, part of the Pale of Settlement created by Catherine II who wouldn't
allow Jews into Russia but kept them in her Pale.  It was like a prison.
They weren't allowed to leave.
  

  He was finally released in 1986, the year after I had left Israel and had returned to the USA.  He took my place and went immediately to Israel where he was reunited with his wife, Natalya (Avital) who had led a worldwide campaign for his release.
                                                                             
In Israel Natan took a leading role in working for the welfare and rights of the new immigrants from the Soviet Union.  My husband and I had made aliyah in 1980, and were teachers bound to teach in Israel.  First we had to take a 10 month class there first to prepare us, though we were professional teachers already.  We studied Hebrew and had to take a 3 hour test.
                                                                       

From a home in Oregon to an apartment in Safed, we flew over
with our German shepherd.  I taught right across the street of David Eleazar
in the junior high.  It got cold here in the winter.  

Dan and I were spoiled Americans and found life much different, so being an actor from Florida, Danny wrote a skit about it and we played as a 3-some with a friend in several hotels about our introduction to Israel.  It was pretty funny, sort of like a Laugh-In skit.  We could return to the States and did, but the Russians couldn't.  So they did need some special privileges and got them, even when we were there.  I saw that later, Natan was still in the government in a higher position.  Good for him.

Why was it that an educated friend of mine, commenting about Israel, said that he hated Natan Sharansky?  I don't think he even knew who he was or what had happened to him.  But sure enough, mention a Jewish name and he's a hated person.  People.  They really need to dig down and find out why they hate so much and especially the Jews.
                                                   

Natan's memoirs, FEAR NO EVIL, appeared in 1988.  It's about triumps over a Police State-Russia.

Scholars and students of anti-Semitism struggled to distinguish between legitimate criticism of policies of the Israeli government and anti-Semitism. In 2004 then Israeli cabinet minister and one-time Soviet human rights activist Natan Sharansky suggested three markers to delineate the boundary between legitimate criticism and anti-Semitism. Under his 3D scheme, when one of these elements was detectable, the line had been crossed: 
1. double standards (judging Israel by one standard and all other countries by another),

2.  delegitimization (the conclusion that Israel had no right to exist), or 

3. demonization (regarding the Israeli state not merely as wrongheaded or mistaken but as a demonic force in the contemporary world).

These 3 facts are used constantly by anti-Semites; in the UN, by the Palestinians, wherever they are.  Just recently, "A gunman opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue on a Saturday(Shabbat) , leaving 11 people dead in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and six others injured.
CreditCredit
"The Anti-Defamation League logged a 57 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2017, compared to the previous year — including bomb threats, assaults, vandalism, and anti-Semitic posters and literature found on college campuses.

A spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League said that before Saturday’s shooting, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in recent United States history was in 1985, when a man killed a family of four in Seattle. He had mistakenly thought they were Jewish." 

Resource;  https://www.britannica.com/topic/anti-Semitism/Nazi-anti-Semitism-and-the-Holocaust
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-Sharansky
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/natan-anatoly-sharansky
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/us/anti-semitism-attacks.html

How Russia; the Largest Country in the World Brought About Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

 Hitler reviewing troops on Eastern Front 1939.  In August 1939 Russia and Germany had signed a non-aggression pact, but on June 22, 1941, Germany entered Russia-ready to kill all Jews.  So much for pacts!!!

I turned on the History 2 channel this afternoon and the program was about how the Germans went into Russia and the first thing they wanted to do was to kill all the Jews they found.  They killed everyone, including little children in the most bloody of ways.  I wanted to cry for all of them.  The news is constant on TV about Russia and the steps they are taking with Obama, China and of course, Ukraine today.  Their behavior is not new.  Look at their history with us.  What's that old saying?

When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;

I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out.

Russia's goal has always been that of continual growth, meaning adding land onto their empire.  At the end of the 15th century, Moscow began gaining land and right now they' re trying to take over Ukraine.  Ukraine was one part of the Pale of Settlement, an area where Jews were permitted to live in since they were banned from Russia proper.  Russia's past history shows that they took land sometimes peacefully but quite often otherwise.  The Czars followed this policy, and then the Communists who replaced them.  The USSR was by far the largest country in the world before its fall.  In 1978 there were 2,680,000 Jews living in the Soviet Union.  They wouldn't allow Jews to leave and move to Israel.  Jews couldn't practice their religion, either, as all Russians had to become atheists.
                                                                   

       Life in a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement, maybe Ukraine,  as shown from Fiddler on the Roof

All the time they encouraged and practiced anti-Semitism.  Jews were forbidden to enter Russia even for temporary reasons.  In 1772 the czars took over Lithuania and large sections of Poland and by doing so they found they were ruling over the world's largest Jewish community.  This became part of the Pale of Settlement.  Did that mean that Jews were left in peace?  "You haven't ever seen Fiddler on the Roof", then. Remember to Cossacks coming into the shtetl and as drunk as they were,  destroy as much as they could, including attacks on the Jews?  that was a Pogrom.  Golda Meier, former Prime Minister of Israel, wrote about her experiences in a pogrom.

The cruelty of the Russians then was shown by drafting Jewish boys into military service at age 12 or younger and stationing them in distant places such as Siberia.  They then attacked these young boys by violence and starvation in order to convert them to Christianity.  Of course this was in the days when their religion was fashionable.  These boys, if they lived, had to stay in the army for 30 years or more.  The surprise is that some held onto their Jewish roots, something they had barely remembered.
                                                                     

The czar in 1855 was Alexander II and startled Jews with acts of kindness.  Luther started that way with Jews, too, but did a 180 turnaround when he saw they wouldn't convert.  Alexander reduced restrictions on their work and their lives and urged them to become educated in Russian history.  Many did and became known as Haskalah (Enlightenment).  Finally, Jews saw that this was all part of Alexander's trick, similar to Luther's.  He was trying to take away their Jewish identity, so the government organized "spontaneous attacks against Jewish villages and towns with Pogroms-destruction.

Anti-Jewish laws were passed.  The worst was the "May Laws."  These forbade Jews from living in rural areas of the Pale.  65,000 Jews were forced out of their village homes, causing terrible overcrowding in cities where they were permitted to live.  It threw the economy of that area into chaos.  The czar knew what he was doing.  He said that 1/3 of the Jews would emigrate.  1/3 would convert.  1/3 would starve to death.

What happened was that 2 million Jews did leave and most went to the USA.  Many came over in the early 1900s; before and after like my grandfather from Lithuania via England and Ireland and my grandmother directly from Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania.   Those that stayed found ways to survive and kept Jewish scholarship going.  The Polish area remained a world leader in Talmudic studies until Hitler came along.  Jews became active in Zionism and socialism which were dedicated to improving the lives of Jews and of the world in general.

1917 was the end of World War I and also meant the fall of the czars.  It brought about a sudden end to anti-Jewish legislation.  Communist revolution brought a new wave of Russian oppression.  The Communists campaigned against religion.  They closed synagogues, made religious education illegal and put great pressure on Jews to end their traditional ways.

At the same time, Russia said that the Jewish people were members of a separate nationality.  At least in 1978, Soviet passports called us Jews and not Russians and Russian Jews were forced to live under new restrictions again.  They couldn't leave the country because this would cause Russia  embarrassment.  Everyone wanted to leave.  Russian Jewry hid from the rest of the world until the 1950's.  Jews in the USA were afraid their relatives would forget about Judaism just like the world had forgotten about them and their pain.  By the 1960's, the international attention was turned onto their situation and they began to demand their rights, including the right to leave Russia.  By the 1970s, tens of thousands were allowed to leave.

I made aliyah in 1980 and went over to be in a retraining program for teachers of English.  In my class were many many Russian teachers of English.  My teacher, Sarah, was carrying on a letter correspondence with a Russian in prison, Sharansky, and was teaching him Hebrew that way on the sly.  The bad thing was that when they spoke English, I, as an American born, couldn't understand them!  Another bad thing was that they were far smarter than I in learning Hebrew!  They were used to learning new languages and knew how to learn and study for Hebrew.  My husband and I didn't.  Though Danny taught boys for their bar mitzvah in Florida, he was having a terrible time learning to speak Hebrew.  We were in our late 30s and this had something to do with it.  Languages are hard to learn when you're older.  So between these 2 facts, we fell to the 3rd and smaller class, the gimel level, and did much better.  Then in the junior high I taught in, I was able to help the Russian and Egyptian teachers of English speak English better throughout my 5 years of living in Israel.  .
                                                                       

                                  Jewish immigration started in 1820s and ended in 1924

Jews had a different sort of history in the USA. In the 1600s 23 Jews from Brazil came in a boat to New York (New Amsterdam) wanting to enter.  What had happened was that The governor turned them down only to be told by his Amsterdam company that they were shareholders in the company and that he should allow them to enter.   In 1791 America's First amendment to the US Constitution made freedom of religion the land of the land.  In 1825, there were only 6,000 Jews in the USA and 9 congregations.  In the 1840s German Jews came over in large numbers and by 1871 there were 250,000 Jews in America.

In the 1880s Russian Jews sailed to Palestine to live.  They were building up the empty land.  Though there were Jews living there, they needed the push from these Ashkenazis to deal with the Ottoman Empire and build.  It's a time when Ashkenazi met up with Mizrachi and Sephardim that had returned to Eretz Yisrael.  This is when many Arabs followed them there hoping to get jobs in the building and development of the land.

 Then Russian Jews immigrated to the USA in the 1900s for reasons why listed above. It was a country already established, unlike Palestine, where immigrated had to start from scratch, much like the returnees from Babylon in 538-515 BCE. after Solomon's Temple was destroyed in 597 BCE and the people had been deported to  Babylon.  
                                                                       

      Starting off life in America as peddlers.  My grandfather had a horse and a wagon In Portland, Oregon.

Jews landed in New York and the Lower East Side of Manhattan Island became a bustling Yiddish-speaking city within the city with their own schools, synagogues and a rich cultural life.
                                                                               

By 1917 after WWI, a law was passed which almost ended immigration but Jewish immigration in particular.While Germany raised its hand against us with the Holocaust, only a trickle of Jewish refugees were permitted to enter the states. Medical schools then had quotas on Jewish students.  We were kept out except for a few.   Even so, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was seen as the Jewish protector and practically all Jews registered as Democrats, and like being faithful to Judaism, have remained faithful to their father's choice of politics, except for a few who have left.

1948 and Israel became a state with President Harry S. Truman voting first for its creation.  Come to find out, my mother was connected to Bess Truman's family tree.  She didn't know that Bess tended to be rather anti-Semitic.  1967's Six Day War added many admirers of Israel, but since then, our reputation has been smudged by anti-Semitic propaganda along with all the attacks they have had to defend themselves against.
                                                                     

The USSR collapsed on December 26, 1991.  The president of Russia today is Vladimir Putin.  "In the international community, Putin is thought of as a fan of Israel and the relations between Israel and Russia had been considered good. When the US and EU condemned the annexation of Crimea and attacked Moscow for providing help to Ukrainian rebels, Israel was practically the only country that made a point to abstain from criticizing or protesting Russia - a silence that was met bitterly in Washington." Russia accused the USA of arming the Syrian rebels, which they have been doing.  But Russia has been arming Israel's enemies.  ""Syria ... was supplying Hizbullah with Russian weapons. In 2006, Israeli forces found evidence of the Russian-made Kornet-E and Metis-M anti-tank systems in Hizbullah's possession in southern Lebanon. "  Russia has sold anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.  
                                                                   

Today the USA has about 6 million Jews living in the USA and 6 million living in Israel.  About 2 million are scattered in other parts of the world.  Our 14 million make up about 0.02% of the world population.  The Russians had made it unbearable for Jews to remain in Russia and live as Jews, so they have left at different periods for Israel.  Hopefully now, the Jews of the Soviet Union, over 2 1/2 million, have moved to Israel and are there today. Without Russia's terrible treatment of Jews in Russia, they may never had made aliyah to Israel.  That's the purpose of our tiny state; to be there for Jews who have suffered in the hands of other nations because of their religion.  Natan  Sharansky is now Chairman of the Jewish Agency in Israel.  I heard him speak when he visited Portland, Oregon a few years ago. Little does he know that he and I shared the same Hebrew teacher.  He did very well with his education by letters.

Resource: My People, Abba Eban's HIstory of the Jews Volume I adapted by David Bamberger pages 222-226
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9329366/Russia-accuses-US-of-arming-Syrian-rebels.html
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.546418
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller
GOLDA by Peggy Mann
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/01/portrait-of-russian-shtetl-kupel.html--be sure to read this.
http://www.jewishagency.org/executive-members/natan-sharansky-0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky

Mila Kunis, Actress: Victim of Anti-Semitism in Ukraine:

                                                                    Mila Kunis
Nadene Goldfoot
A Ukrainian-American actress, Mila Kunis, formerly Milena Markovna Kunis, is  Jewish.. She was born in Chernivtsi in the Ukrainian SSR.  All Jews were forced to live in the Pale of Settlement of which Ukraine was a part from 1791 to 1917. She lost many relatives in the Holocaust when 900,000 Jews were murdered in Ukraine by the Nazis.   Mila was recently slammed by the far-right Svoboda Party member of the Ukrainian Parliament proclaiming that she wasn't "Ukrainian but a zhydovka," (Jew).   (from Yid you get Zid-Zyyd or Jew).  He is saying that Jews were not considered Ukrainians when 1/3 of  Ukrainians before WWII were Jews.

Natan Sharansky was a Ukranian Jew who was a Soviet refusenik and was jailed because he wanted to leave the country for Israel, and then called a spy,  He had even tried to learn to read Hebrew.  My Hebrew teacher was sending him lessons on the sly from Israel.  He became a Human Rights activist, author and member of the Knesset in Israel.  Born as Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky in Stalino, Soviet Union in 1948, the city's name was later changed to Donetsk which is in Ukraine.  He was a child chess prodigy and became a mathematician.  .

 One of Kiev's city gates is called the Judaic Gate.  Jews immigrated to the Ukraine in waves from Khazaria, the Caliphate and Byzantium between the 9th and 12th centuries and from Central Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, and then from Poland in the 16th century.  The Russian government encouraged Jewish agricultural settlement in southern Ukraine from 1804-59 so that by 1897 there were 21 Jewish colonies in the Kherson province and 16 in Yekaterinoslav with 26,326 people.  In the 1920's the Soviet government promoted Jewish settlement in the Ukraine with funds from the American Joint Distribution Committee in the regions of Kalinindorf, Zlatopol and Stalindorf, a time my cousin's family immigrated to the states from Ukraine.

 By 1930 there were 90,000 Jewish agriculturists there.  Jewish economy and culture suffered under Soviet rule of Communism.  About half of Soviet Russia's 3 million Jews lived in Ukraine before WWII under Nazi rule.  If they hadn't fled to Russia they were wiped out by the Germans and Ukrainians in 1941-1942.  By 1970 the Jewish population was 777,126.  In 1989 it was 484,129.  They weren't allowed to leave and go to Israel. Today Ukraine has the 3rd largest Jewish population in Europe and it is the 5th largest group in the world.  Kiev has 110,000 Jews of an aging population with a medium of age 45.

"Zhydovka " is said as a deeply hurtful slur which is what his party members are known for doing, regularly injecting anti-Semitism into their speeches and public pronouncements.  It should be easy to do since the Ukraine was a part of the Pale of Settlement where Jews had to live.  They were isolated this way from the rest of Russia.

"Under Nikita Khrushchev’s rule over Ukraine, Ukrainian Jews who fled to Soviet Asia during the occupation slowly returned to reclaim their homes, possessions and jobs. The Ukrainians who remained in the communities were hostile to the returning Jews. The government, once again, refused to interfere in the conflicts between the Russians and the Jews. It seems to be a constant hotbed of anti-Semitism in Ukraine.

As Russia seems to have backed Hezbollah terrorists who are in Lebanon, Russians in Ukraine are seen to be part of a trend of spewing out anti-Semitic messages and inciting violence seen in the past.  Take the Svododa party who gained over 10% of the national vote.  Their campaigning was one of injecting fear into their society.  They warned that foreigners and minorities are going to take over the country and they sounded like repeating Nazi propaganda of Joseph Goebbels.  The people mistrust the Jews of all the people they could distrust the most.  The odd fact is that in the early 1900's, many Russian Jews immigrated from the Pale of Settlement to the USA.  Then the Nazis in WWII did away with most in the Holocaust.  That there were any Jews left in Ukraine is a surprise to me!  And these few left are the minorities that are going to take over the country?  The Ukrainians should be so lucky!

Mila came to Los Angeles with her family at age 7 in 1991 from Ukraine  Her family moved because of anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union.  Her parents said they saw no future there for her or her older brother.  Her parents raised her as a Jew as much as they could being religion of any sort was suppressed in the Soviet Union. They came with only $250, which was all they were allowed to take out.  Her parents gave up good jobs and degrees which were not transferable.  Today her parents have "amazing" jobs and they are very lucky and not poor.

 As an after-school activity, her parents enrolled her in acting classes and she was soon discovered by an agent.  Before she knew it she was appearing in several TV series and commercials.  Her first significant role came before her 15th birthday, playing Jackie Burkhart on the TV series, "That '0's Show."  A year later she was cast as the voice of Meg Griffin on the animated series "Family Guy."

After that she has been in many films such as "The Book of Eli, and Black Swan where she played the part of Lily.  She's received the nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an award for Outstanding Performance by a female actor in a supporting role.

As for romance, when she was 18 she went with actor Macaulay Culkin that lasted for 8 years.  Of course, I hope that she finds a nice Jewish boy and has a family.   .  She is a beautiful young lady and is part of the American Democratic Party.  Even her native country, Ukraine has heard of Mila.  Such anti-Semitism developing there again should remind us that our world has shrunk and is intertwined.  What goes on in Ukraine affects Jews in other places.  Have we had dreams of having a more tolerant and peaceful international community? People slip into their old ways of needing a scapegoat and always pick on the Jews.

Resource: http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/06/first-they-came-for-mila-kunis/ from Oleksandr Feldman, President of the Ukrainian Jewish committee and member of Parliament of Ukraine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_Kunis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Ukraine
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/communities/show/id/91
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/ukraine.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4298796/Mila-Kunis-reveals-her-secret-past-as-a-Jew-living-in-Ukraine-from-where-she-fled-to-escape-hatred.html