Gaza's : Why It's The Main Home Of Refugees, Terrorists and What Jews Had To Do With It

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

Gaza is a 25-mile long stretch of coastal land (141 square miles, 365 square kilometers).  The average width is 8 miles.  The whole of Gaza (aka the Gaza Strip) is about twice the size of Washington, D.C. and three times the population, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and Israel.  The Gaza Strip is geographically about the size of Philadelphia, Detroit or the country of Grenada.

The Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza were initially established to accommodate Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (also known as the Nakba). The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1949 specifically to provide relief and works programs for these refugees. 

It's important to note that the ongoing conflict in the region has caused significant displacement, with the UN estimating that about 1.9 million people (roughly 90% of the population) have been displaced across the Gaza Strip. This displacement makes it challenging to provide precise, real-time population figures. 

Jews lived here but left in 1917 at the end of WWI.  Those left, really left during the 1929 Arab riots against Jews.  The city of Gaza in 1949 had 30,000, filled with many refugees.  

Egypt had Gaza originally since 1949.  Gaza fell into Israel's hands in November 1956 in the Sinai Operation .  Israel returned the Gaza Strip in March 1957 when Egyptians resumed control with a UN Emergency Force.  In May 1967, the UN secretary-general U Thant obeyed Nasser's demand to withdraw the force allowing the Six Day War to take place.  The 1967 census found 352,260 in the Gaza Strip of whom 172,520 were refugees.  

                                  IDF in Jerusalem 

• Israel had occupied the Gaza Strip since the 1967 Six-Day War.
• Prior to the 2005 disengagement, there were approximately 9,000 Israeli settlers living in 21 settlements within Gaza.  That means that before refugees arrived, there were 179,740 Palestinians 
• living in Gaza.  

Israel completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, as part of its unilateral disengagement plan. Israel had only held it for 38 years.

  

This plan, announced in late 2003 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, aimed to withdraw Israeli soldiers and dismantle settlements in Gaza. Control of the Gaza Strip was then transferred to the Palestinian Authority (PA). 

What Israel left For The Palestinians in Gaza:  

Based on the provided search results, when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the following infrastructure was left behind: 

• Greenhouses: Israeli settlers left behind agricultural greenhouses, which were intended to be used by Palestinians for economic development. Some sources suggest these greenhouses were later looted or destroyed.
• Road networks: A network of roads, including highways and smaller roads, was left behind.
• Other facilities: Educational institutions and healthcare facilities were also left intact.
• Public Buildings: Public buildings, factories, and greenhouses that could not be dismantled were left intact.
• Water Systems: Israel left behind water supply systems that had served the Israeli settlements, including wells, reservoirs, and a transmission system.
• Water and Electricity Networks: Israel continued to provide Gaza with water, communication, electricity, and sewage networks. 

Refugees that entered Gaza:  

• 1948 Arab-Israeli War (Nakba): The initial influx of refugees to Gaza occurred during and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, known to Palestinians as the Nakba ("catastrophe").
• Forced Displacement: Approximately 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled their homes as a result of the war.
• Concentration in Gaza: Gaza became a major area for their concentration.
• Descendants Classified as Refugees: UNRWA, the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees, classifies those original refugees and their descendants as refugees, regardless of where they were born.

• Many in Refugee Camps: A significant portion of these refugees reside in recognized UNRWA refugee camps within the Gaza Strip.
• Impact of Recent Hamas Terrorist Attack on Israel of October 7, 2023 : Recent War;  particularly the Israeli military campaign starting in October 2023, has resulted in a further wave of internal displacement within Gaza.
• Humanitarian Crisis: The situation has led to a severe humanitarian crisis with significant challenges regarding food security, water, healthcare, and access to essential services.    Hamas has stolen food meant for civilians, sold it at high prices, hidden in their homes, hospitals, mosques, tunnels, 

Islam allows 4 wives per man, so population has grown 4 times faster than the norm. 

Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip and removed the Palestinian Authority (PA) from power in the following way: 

1. Electoral Victory in 2006:

• In the January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
• Hamas ran under the banner of "Change and Reform" and secured 74 out of 132 available seats, while the incumbent Fatah party received 45 seats.
• Hamas' victory was seen as a manifestation of public disenchantment with the prevailing Fatah leadership and its perceived corruption. 

2. Formation of a Hamas-led Government and International Backlash:

• Following the election, Hamas formed a government led by Ismail Haniyeh.
  
  
  
• However, due to Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence, and adhere to previous agreements, Israel, the United States, and the European Union imposed sanctions and cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) government, putting immense pressure on the Hamas-led government.  who, by the way, never paid Israel their water
• or electric bills, even with all the money they received from
• their other backers;  Muslim communities.  

                         Russian soldier in 1791

            

Just a quick comparison with Gaza to the Jewish Land of Pale Of Settlement of eastern Europe:  

(Gaza Strip : 365 kilometers) (1.9 million people)   (Pale of Settlement 1,224,008 sq  km) (4 million people) 

On December 23, 1791, Catherine II (“the Great”), the empress of Russia, authorized the creation of the Pale of Settlement, an area in the western part of the empire in which Jewish subjects would be required to reside.  None could live in 

Russia proper.  Catherine the Great did not acquire the Pale of Settlement; it was created by her in 1791 as a way to manage the Jewish population within the Russian Empire after territorial gains from Poland and the Ottoman Empire. The Pale of Settlement was an area within which Jews were permitted to live and work, but it also restricted their movement and commercial activities within the larger Russian Empire.  The first significant decree in this direction was issued on December 23, 1791, which restricted the commercial rights of Jews to certain areas newly annexed from Poland and Turkey, effectively creating the initial boundaries of what would become the Pale of Settlement. 

The Pale of Settlement was a territory within the Russian Empire where Jews were "permitted" to reside permanently, encompassing roughly 472,590 square miles (1,224,008 sq km). This area included parts or the whole of modern-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Moldova from 1791 to 1917's end of WWI.  That

means that the Jews could only live in the Pale of Settlement and that was it for 126 years.   The borders of the Pale of Settlement were formally abolished by the Russian Provisional Government on March 20th (April 2nd, New Style) 1917, following the February Revolution. This action effectively dismantled the Pale, ending the restrictions on Jewish residency and movement within the Russian Empire.  About 4 million Jews were living in the Pale of Settlement.  

Resource:

https://www.anera.org/how-big-is-gaza/

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-19/israel-hamas-war-why-gaza-has-so-many-palestinian-refugees

World War I's War Brought On Overt Anti-Semitism On Top Of Present Anti-Semitism

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

    More than a century after World War I, war continues to be the  same.....

Jews suffered significantly during World War I, experiencing a range of harms across different regions and in the context of their military service. 

Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement, a Russian holding by Catherine II in 1791.  It was made up of 25 provinces of Czarist Russia of Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia, and Crimea; the home of "Fiddler On The Roof." 

"Fiddler on the Roof" is set in 1905 in the fictional Jewish village of Anatevka, located in the Pale of Settlement within the Russian Empire (now part of Ukraine). The story follows Tevye, a Jewish milkman, as he navigates the challenges of tradition, family, and societal changes amidst a backdrop of poverty and anti-Semitism.   World War I began in Ukraine when the Russian Empire invaded Galicia (part of modern-day western Ukraine) in August 1914.

The war on the eastern front between Russia and the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) was conducted on territories that were home to almost four million Jews. In the autumn of 1914 and the winter of 1915, Russian forces occupied Austrian Galicia, and in the spring and summer of 1915, Germany and Austria conquered Congress Poland (the duchy annexed by Russia according to the treaties of 1815), Volhynia, Lithua­nia, and western Belorussia. Under Russian rule, the Jews were suspected of collaboration with the enemy, and 600,000 of them were banished from the front by the czarist army, a traumatic experience and an economic catastrophe that was still felt long after the war

For instance;  

• Mass expulsions and forced resettlement: Between March and September 1915, the Russian army expelled over half a million Jews from frontline areas. For example, all 40,000 Jews in Kovno (Kaunas) were forcibly removed within 48 hours in May 1915. Similar expulsions occurred in Courland and northern Lithuania in 1915.
•  The Russian army expelled Jews from areas near the front lines, restricted their movements, and took hostages as a way of instilling fear and submission in the Jewish population.

1. Displacement and Persecution:

• Eastern Europe: As the reader now knows, the war on the Eastern Front, fought in territories with a large Jewish population, resulted in massive displacement.  Russian forces, suspecting collaboration with the enemy, expelled an estimated 600,000 Jews from frontline areas. This caused economic hardship and trauma that lingered long after the war. Many other Jews, fearing the violence, fled their homes voluntarily.
• Widespread Suspicion and Hostage-Taking: The Russian military command, in particular, displayed overt anti-Semitism, viewing the Jewish population as disloyal and involved in espionage. They implemented repressive measures, including mass deportations, expulsions, and the taking of hostages as a means of control and fear. These actions were justified as necessary to protect against perceived "enemy aliens".
• Pogroms: Following World War I, pogroms (violent attacks and riots against Jews) reignited in Eastern Europe, often instigated by soldiers. In Ukraine and Poland between 1918 and 1921, there were over 1,500 pogroms resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 Jews. 

2. Casualties and Military Service:

• Serving on All Sides: Jews fought in the armies of their respective countries, often finding themselves on opposing sides of the conflict.
• High Casualties: Over 1.5 million Jewish soldiers participated in the war, and an estimated 150,000 were killed.
• Antisemitic Claims and Discrimination: Despite their service, Jews in many countries faced harassment and false accusations of responsibility for the war or shirking duty. 

3. Long-Term Consequences:

• Eastern European Jewry Devastated: The war and subsequent violence led to the disruption or destruction of countless Jewish communities, a catastrophe from which East European Jewry never fully recovered.
• Radicalization and Political Change: The war's upheaval contributed to the radicalization of some Eastern European Jewish youth towards secular and Marxist ideologies. The Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent Soviet regime attempted to suppress the practice of Judaism.
• Continued Anti-Semitism: The war exacerbated existing anti-Semitism in various countries. In Germany, the "stab-in-the-back" myth, which blamed Jews for the country's defeat, contributed to a climate of hatred.
• Foundation for the Holocaust: The virulent unleashing of anti-Semitism during WWI is seen as having paved the way for the horrors of the Holocaust. 
  
  French Troops driving back the Germans in 1918 

During World War I, Jewish communities faced devastation, displacement, and persecution, especially in Eastern Europe. The war also contributed to a rise in antisemitism that had tragic consequences later. 

As the perennial scapegoat, the Jews were also blamed by many for the Bolshevik coup d’etat of October 1917; approximately 100,000 Jews were killed in the anti‑Bolshevik campaigns conducted by Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians.

 update:  6/29/25 8:44am:  The Pale of Settlement was a territory within the Russian Empire where Jews were permitted to reside permanently, encompassing roughly 472,590 square miles (1,224,008 sq km). This area included parts or the whole of modern-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Moldova. 

• Jewish Service in WWI: Despite facing pervasive antisemitism and discrimination, many Jews served in World War I, including in the German and Allied armies. Some were even overrepresented on the front lines, according to a German "Jewish census" conducted in 1916. 

Resource:

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/wwi-and-the-jews/#:~:text=As%20the%20perennial%20scapegoat%2C%20the,map%20of%20the%20Jewish%20people.

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/antisemitism-and-pogromsin-the-military-russian-empire/

Holocaust Victim Count from What Countries

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

When the Grand Mufti , Hajj Mohammed Amin El- Husseini (1893-1974)  visited Hitler in Germany, both plotting the end of all Jews.  In 1921, the Jewish high commissioner of England, Sir Herbert Samuel--titled but knew little of what was going on, appointed  Husseini the mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Moslem Council.  By 1936 as chairman of the Arab Supreme Council, he organized the Palestine disturbances (attacks on Jews)  for which he was sentenced for exile in 1937.  

 In looking at this chart, Poland's Jews suffered the most being they had a large Jewish population.  The Soviet Union had the 2nd largest population both in their country and death in the Holocaust.  Surprising to me is 3rd of Hungary with 564,507 listed in the Holocaust.

The Holocaust where 6 million Jews were slaughtered in the name of Hitler.    

The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.       

                   Jews in Concentration Camps, doomed for the gas chambers                 

Poland:  Jews lived here since the 9th century and either came from Germany, Bohemia or another area.  It's not known if  they came from the South of the Kingdom of Kiev or the Byzantine Empire but they were reinforced by KHAZAR elements.  Most likely they were traders.  There was a revolutionary rising in 1863 and Jews wanted equal rights for a change.  It's effect was for Jews to assimilate and so they then held key positions in foreign trade, in timber, grain and metal trades, and in all branches of finance and industry and in the free professions such as doctors, lawyers, etc.  

The effect of this was anti-Semitism at the end of the 19th century.  Their capabilities in these fields overwhelmed the community, not understanding their capabilities.  The anti-Semites were supported and encouraged by the clergy, so the press launched a campaign against the Jews.  Political groups loved that.  A pogrom took place in Warsaw in 1881.

In 1939, Poland had over 3 million Jews.  When Nazis occupied Poland, Jews underwent wholesale massacre.  Ghettos were set up in Lodz, Bialystok, etc., a prelude to concentration camps and the gas chambers (death).  Jews from other areas were brought to Poland to be killed there.  A few managed to escape to Russia and a return, only to walk into another pogrom against them.  So shameful of the Poles.  So, between 1948 and 1958, about 140,500 Jews left Poland for Israel.  after the Six-Day War in 1967, a strong anti-Semitic reaction in the government deprived Jews of leading positions in various walks of life and led to a further emigration.  The number remaining in 1990 was about 16,000.  The Jewish population in Poland is estimated to be around 10,000 people today. This is a significant decline from the pre-Holocaust era, when Poland had one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. 

Dedicated to Professor Alexander Lerner, two of whose daughters, aged five and three, were killed by the Nazis in 1941, and whose own sixteen year struggle to leave the Soviet Union for Israel is now successfully concluded:  The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert:  September 1939:  the trapping of Polish Jewry:  p; 84 "  

The German Forces crossed into Poland in the early hours of Friday, 1/Sept.,1939.  For six and a half years Poland's Jews had watched with alarm the violent anti-Semitism imposed by Nazi Germany first upon German, then upon Austrian and finally upon Czech Jewry.  They knew, at first hand, from Polish anti-Semites what mob hatred could do.  But Polish Jewry had its own means of defense, its own press, its own institutions, and its own representation in the Polish parliament......On that first day of the German invasion, 193,950 Jews lived in Warsaw, the Polish capital.  This was a third of Warsaw's population;  a greater number of Jews than were left in Germany.  Only in New York where two million Jews lived, were there more Jews in a single city.  In the whole of Palestine there were only a few thousand more Jews than in Warsaw alone."  

                                                                           

                                                                 Jews leaving Russia

Russia/Soviet Union:  Jews lived in Crimea, Caucasus, Khazars, Lithuania, Turkestan, Ukraine, etc.  In 986, Jews participated in a disputation on the occasion of Duke Vladimir's conversion to Christianity.  A Jewish gate is mentioned in the 12th century at Kiev, and the Jewish quarter there was looted in 1113, a time when Russian Jews attended western yeshivot (schools)  and addressed questions to the German rabbis.   By 15th century, Jewish traders from Lithuania disseminated a Juaizing sect in Novgorod and Moscow and this precipitated a dramatic reaction, because in 1563, 300 Jews were drowned at Polotsk and Vitebsk on refusing to accept baptism. 

By 1667, the Jews were expelled from Eastern Ukraine upon its annexation to Russia. Clauses prohibiting Jews from visiting the country were inserted in treaties signed by Russia with foreign powers in 1550 and 1678.  Jews were then expelled (expulsed) orders were issued in 1727, 1738, and 1742.  In 1753, 35,000 Jews were driven out of Russia. In 1762, Catherine II, the empress, permitted all aliens to live in Russia except Jews.  By the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the great Jewish masses of White Russia (Belarus), the Ukraine, Lithuania and Courland became Russian subjects and , for more than a century, the great majority of the world's Jews were under the reactionary rule of the Czars.  The law in 1786 restricted Jews could only live in the towns, while Catherine II created the Pale of Settlement-allowing Jews to live there but not other places in Russia.  

 

Things got better by 1802 when a Council for Jewish Affairs was established.  Two years later, the PALE was defined, restricting Jews in the villages (1807-1808) and the activities of the Council (Kahal) was limited involving religion and charity.  Russia also prohibited the traditional Jewish costume.  It took measures to promote agriculture work for the Jewish people.  Napoleon came along in 1812 in an invasion but the Jews remained loyal to Russia.  Alexander I (1801-1825)  was benevolent but later turned reactionary toward the Jews so again some 20,000 Jews were expelled from the provinces of Vitebsk and Mohilev in 1824 with remaining Jews kept from the frontier. 

 

During Nicholas I reign, about 600 oppressive enactments  on Jews were published who regarded them as an injurious element.  By 1827, military service was brutally imposed on Jews.  The frontiers of the Pale of Settlement, where they were allowed to live,  were restricted in 1835 and remained effective until 1915 during WWI.  Jewish books were censored in 1836, and in 1848, Jewish Council meetings were abolished.  

                                                   From Fiddler on the Roof:  saying goodbye to father

The Nazis, who invaded Russia in 1941, aimed at exterminating the Jewish population.  So, of the 500,000 Jews in White Russia, now called  Belarus, landlocked country of eastern Europe. Until it became independent in 1991, Belarus, formerly known as Belorussia or White Russia, was the smallest of the three Slavic republics included in the Soviet Union (the larger two being Russia and Ukraine).   

 Only half escaped to the interior and up to 200,000 were slaughtered.  The Soviet government established the anti-Fascist Committee to appeal to World Jewry in 1941  but immediately the Nazi peril had passed, , an anti-Jewish trend asserted itself;  many outstanding Jews disappeared.  Stalin died in 1953.  All who survived were released.  

"In the areas of Einsatzkommando killings, east of the river Bug, spring and summer had brought an upsurge of killings, now the ground was once again soft enough, but not too waterlogged, for the digging of pits for mass graves.  At Radziwillow, in Volhynia, 3,000 Jews were rounded up for slaughter on May 29th.  But a group of young men, among them Asher Czerkaski, organized a break-out.  1,500 Jews were shot;  but a further 1,500 reached a temporary security of the nearby forests. " 

"Another area in which the killings continued was south Russia.  In the Kherson region, more than 70,000 Jews were murdered, many of them farmers.  No hamlets, however remote, could escape the thoroughness of the search.  On May 17, in the village of Clhaplinka, 3 Jewish families were found and shot. " 

Well, things remained bad for Jews.  The 1959 census showed 2,268, 000 Jews, but after 1967, Russian Jews demanded the right to emigrate to Israel and this was achieved in the early 1970.  In 1980 when I made aliyah, many Russians were also entering at the same time though the doors were closed for them most of the time.  I was in a class of 40 of mainly Russian Jews, and we were all learning Hebrew.  Russians knew how to study a foreign language !  My paternal grandparents had come from Lithuania to the USA and never did learn English.    

Resource:

USHMM:  

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

https://holocausteducation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/3-6-things-short-lesson.pdf 

The new Standard Jewish encyclopedia 

The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert, a history of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War, copyright 1985;  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#:~:text=The%20contemporary%20Polish%20Jewish%20community,sort%20is%20several%20times%20larger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

Countries Russia Once Controlled and Wants Back

 Nadene Goldfoot                                       

Once upon a time, Russia gained control over Ukraine.  Most of Ukraine fell to the Russian Empire under the reign of anti-Semitic Catherine the Great; on January 23, 1793.  Ukraine was then annexed by Russia in this Second Partition of Poland.

Catherine the Great, anti-Semite,  created the Pale of Settlement made up of 25 provinces of Czarist Russia (in Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia and Crimea) where Jews were allowed to live.  Otherwise, they were not to live in Russia proper. 

There were 2 Catherines.  Catherine I ruled: 1725-1727 and in May 1727 expelled all Jews resident in Little Russia.  this order was commanded after her death.  Catherine II The Great ruled 1762-1796, and her Jewish policy was marked by coercion.  Jews were allowed to register in the merchant and urban classes of 1780.  During her last years of 1789-1796, she prevented the extension of Jewish settlement and in 1795, prohibited Jewish residence in rural areas.  

Lithuania, Poland Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire.   

Jews moved to Ukraine from Khazaria, the Caliphate, and Byzantium between 9th and 12th centuries; then from central Europe from 14th and 15th centuries and from Poland in the 16th century.  Massacres happened in 17th and 18th centuries like the Khrnielnicki and Haidamak uprisings.  The 19th century influxes were from Galicia and white Russia, Ukraine was always an anti-Semitic center, scene of pogroms in 1905 and 1918-1920.  

During the 14th and 15th centuries, present-day Ukrainian territories came under the rule of four external powers: the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, 

the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as shown above,  and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. The latter two would then merge into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth following the Union of Krewo and Union of Lublin.  

1, The history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1648) covers a period in the history of Poland and Lithuania, before their joint state was subjected to devastating wars in the middle of the 17th century.                     

   2. The Russo-Polish War of 1654–67 and the failed Treaty of Hadiach which would have formed Polish–Lithuanian–Ruthenian Commonwealth. In consequence, by the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, signed in 1686, the eastern portion of Ukraine (east of the Dnieper River) was to come under Russian rule, 146,000 rubles were to be paid to Poland as compensation for the loss of the Right Bank of Ukraine, and the parties agreed not to sign a separate treaty with the Ottoman Empire. The treaty was strongly opposed in Poland and was not ratified by the Polish–Lithuanian Sejm until 1710. The legal legitimacy of its ratification has been disputed. 

3. According to Jacek Staszewski, the treaty was not confirmed by a resolution of the Sejm until its 1764 session.

To the grief of all the bourgeois we’ll fan a worldwide conflagration!, a Soviet poster with the words from the poem The Twelve by Alexander Blok (artist Alexander Zelenskiy)                   (see below)         

 The Twelve is a controversial long poem by Aleksandr Blok. Written early in 1918, the poem was one of the first poetic responses to the October Revolution of 1917.  The October Revolution (also called the Bolshevik Revolution) overturned the interim provisional government and established the Soviet Union. The October Revolution was a much more deliberate event, orchestrated by a small group of people. The Bolsheviks, who led this coup, prepared their coup in only six months. Bolsheviks were  a member of the majority faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party, which was renamed the Communist Party after seizing power in the October Revolution of 1917.  The Bolsheviks, also known in English as the Bolshevists, were a far-left, revolutionary Marxist faction founded by Vladimir Lenin that split with the Mensheviks from the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898, at its Second Party Congress in 1903.

 Alexander Zelenskiy was a Russian artist who was born in 1882. Alexander Zelenskiy's work has been offered at auction multiple times. The artist died in 1942. He must be a relative of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine today.

4. On 29 December 1922 a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Ukraine officially declared itself an independent country on 24 August 1991, when the communist Supreme Soviet (parliament) of Ukraine proclaimed that Ukraine would no longer follow the laws of USSR and only the laws of the Ukrainian SSR, de facto declaring Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union.

On March 12, 1990, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania declared independence. Moscow imposed an economic blockade and then sent in security forces to reestablish control, which was resisted by the vast majority of Lithuanians.                            

On November 11, 1918, Marshal Józef Piłsudski became Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army and de facto head of what was about to become the Republic of Poland, effectively restoring Polish independence after 123 years of Prussian, Austrian and Russian occupation.

1918 - After more than a century of foreign rule, an independent Polish state is restored after the end of World War One, with Marshal Jozef Pilsudski as head of state.

1939 - Nazi Germany invades Poland. Beginning of World War Two as the United Kingdom and France declare war on Germany in response. USSR invades from the east. Germany and the Soviet Union divide Poland between them and treat Polish citizens with extreme brutality. Germany begins systematic persecution of the large Jewish population.

THE TWELVE:  The poem describes the march of twelve Red Guards (likened to the Twelve Apostles) through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them. The mood of the Twelve as conveyed by the poem oscillates from base and even sadistic aggression towards everything perceived bourgeois and counter-revolutionary, to strict discipline and sense of "revolutionary duty." A prostitute who is found with Ivan, who is from the same background as the Twelve but is in no revolutionary mood, is killed by one of the Twelve (Peter), who appears unusually struck by the accident and later reveals to his comrades that he had been in love with the woman. However, after the others remind him that in these revolutionary times one's personal tragedies are nothing, the murderer regains his determination and continues the march. In the last stanza of the poem, most controversially, a figure of Jesus Christ is seen in the snowstorm, heading the march of the Twelve.

Aleksandr Blok TWELVE A Poem in a new translation by Maria Carlson 

1. Black night. White snow. The wind, the wind! Impossible to stay on your feet. The wind, the wind! Blowing across God’s world! The wind swirls round The clean, white snow. Under the snow -- there’s ice. It’s slick, it’s hard, Pedestrians Slip -- oops! too bad! From building to building Stretches a cable. On the cable’s a placard: “All Power to the Constituent Assembly!” An old woman keens and weeps beneath it, She just can’t understand what it means, Why such a huge scrap of cloth For such a placard? It would make so many footwraps for the boys, And so many are without clothes, without shoes . . .The old woman, hen-like, Managed somehow to scramble over the snowbank. “Oh, Holy Mother of God, our Protectress! “Oh, the Bolsheviks are going to drive me into my grave!” The wind is biting! The frost tenacious!.....

Russia  invaded Ukraine Thu, Feb 24, 2022.  

Resource:

https://kafkadesk.org/2020/11/11/on-this-day-in-1918-poland-regained-its-independence-after-123-years/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17754512

https://www.cato.org/commentary/how-lithuania-destroyed-soviet-union#:~:text=On%20March%2012%2C%201990%2C%20the,the%20vast%20majority%20of%20Lithuanians.

https://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/russianrev/summary/#:~:text=The%20October%20Revolution%20(also%20called,coup%20in%20only%20six%20months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_(poem)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Soviet_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union_(1917%E2%80%931927)

https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/6598/BlokTwelve_RusEngTxt.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y  translation into English of poem

https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Alexander-Zelenskiy/947BF330AEF04347/Biography