The Irony of What's Happening to Ukraine

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

                      Ukraine, scene of play and movie, Fiddler on the Roof

Of all the eastern European countries that is so ironic, is that Ukraine treated the Jews the worst in World War II and even before that.  Jews suffered from horrible pogroms, and it seemed like many Ukrainians helped the Germans round up Jews for the slaughter.  

Ukraine has had the reputation as being a newer country for the Jews, less religious as countries like Lithuania which was home of some outstanding rabbis.  

Jews in Ukraine suffered from severe massacres during the Chmielnicki and Hsaidamak uprisings in the 17th and 18th centuries.                                    

SS paramilitaries murder Jewish civilians, including a mother and child, in 1942, at Ivanhorod, Ukraine.

In the 19th century the main influxes were from Galicia and White Russia.  Ukraine was always an anti-Semitic center. In January 1918, a regime of national autonomy was established in the Ukraine. Jewish economy and their culture suffered under Soviet rule.  About half of Soviet Russia's 3 million Jews lived there before World War II, but under Nazi rule, the Jewish inhabitants who had not fled to Russia were wiped out by the Germans and Ukrainians in 1941 and 1942.                                           

The Last Jew in Vinnitsa, the 1942 photoraph showing a Jewish man near the town of Vinnytsia about to be shot dead by a member of Einsatzgruppe D. Also present are members of the German Army and the German Labor Service.

"Total civilian losses during the war and German occupation in Ukraine are estimated at four million, including up to a million Jews who were murdered by Einsatzgruppen units, Order Police battalions, Wehrmacht troops and local Nazi collaborators. Einsatzgruppe C (Otto Rasch) was assigned to north and central Ukraine, and Einsatzgruppe D (Otto Ohlendorf) to Moldavia, south Ukraine, the Crimea, and, during 1942, the north Caucasus."

It's amazing that there were Jews who remained or returned to Ukraine after the war.  There are reasons for that; age, business,  family ties.  So it's ironic that we find Ukraine with a Jewish president, Zelensky.  

So here they are, Ukraine being attacked by Russia and having an extremely brave President Zelensky at the top position, leading the people.  This is ironic.  Why?

              President Zelensky, caring for Ukraine and its people

Zelensky was born to Jewish parents in the industrial metropolis of Kryvyy Rih in southern Ukraine. 

When he was a small child, his family relocated to Erdenet, Mongolia, for four years before returning to Kryvy Rih, where Zelensky entered school. It's Siberia that has been known as the place where people are sent by Russia as a punishment.   Mongolia is nearby.  In fact, in DNA studies, some male Jews with the Q haplogroup  are found to have originated some 20,000 years ago from Mongolia, Siberia and parts of Turkey.   Like many people from Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, he grew up as a native Russian speaker, but he also acquired fluency in both Ukrainian and English. In 1995 he entered Kryvyy Rih Economic Institute, the local campus of Kyiv National Economic University, and in 2000 he graduated with a law degree.  His wife is not Jewish but is  of course, Ukrainian.

  The Ukrainians have turned it around in their attitude towards Jews and have even elected a Jew as president who had no background of being a politician or ever having held a government office.  He was a lawyer and a comedian,  very common known Jewish occupations.  He was known as a TV personality who could portray governmental follies in a humorous way that made people laugh.  From 1945 to 2021, 76 years and people have changed their position.  That's 3 generations and we have a changed, very democratic society who are giving their lives to keep their country democratic not be under the thumb of the Russians and communism.  Now most of it lies in rubble.  

There is hope in the world if a country like Ukraine has changed.  I'm so   sorry that attention to this is caused by their destruction from Russia.  We can't lose our humanity to the enemies of peaceful living  which includes deciding for themselves what politics they can live under.  Russia is ruthless, hateful, bloodthirsty, slaughtering Ukrainians left and right for no reason.  The world stands in shock and disgust of what has been happening.  

Israel has to be very careful about helping Ukraine.  Russia is in control of Syria, their neighbor.  Russia has allowed Israel to go after terrorists attacking Israel from Syria.  If Israel is out and out against Russia now, Russia will turn on Israel along with the terrorists.  It's been a conundrum.  India is in a similar position but with other reasons.  So Israel had been doing other things for Ukraine like sending doctors, setting up medical aid units and such.  

From my cousin Denise in South Africa, something to share for Passover, which we're about to embark on this Friday evening:

Who Knows One?  one of our songs at this time.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZHQqIkPlk8

Resource:

The new Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

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

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Volodymyr-Zelensky#ref343799

Russia's Tactic of "Nazi" Accusations of Zelensky

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Putin is claiming that Zelensky and his parliament are Nazis in their treatment of the Ukrainians on the Eastern part of their country, the Donbas region.  Donetst and Luhansk are ethnically more Russian than the rest of Ukraine. They speak Russian.  "Putin’s formal recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic signaled an end to a 7 year-old peace deal known as the Minsk agreement. Now, the fate of the region remains unclear, but it has fallen into the Russian hands..

Zelensky is Jewish, the grandson of Holocaust victims.  He was never a politician, voted as president for these very reasons.  He replaced a president who was embroiled in the current phase all over the world of greasing palms to change their governments' paths.  The Ukrainians demanded honesty for a change, sincerity, and they got it in Zelensky.  The tide had turned.  Jews were no longer a someone to hate, a piranha to avoid, their scapegoat.  Zelensky would never act like the Nazis to any people.  He's the last regime to do that.  Any act of cruelty does not come from  his authority, you can bet your bottom dollar on that fact.  

Calling the Zelensky regime "Nazis" is the current ploy used by all the liars who are in a government position.  First used by the Nazi Hitler, gullible people tend to believe the loudest voices,  and went along with the shpiels  fed to them.  It has since been used by all Czarist leaders from Russia to Hamas, etc.  Russia's propaganda machine is full of you know what, deceiving their population as to why the need to invade Ukraine.  The numbers of Russian soldiers killed so far is extremely low on the Russian side and extremely high on the Ukrainian side.   

      A man walks past an abandoned building in the Donetsk region town of Avdiivka

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.  They've been their own man for the past almost 31 years.  Putin decided that he wanted them back in the union of USSR, which he is trying to re-create again.  

Ukraine has had a taste of freedom in their politics and they like it.  They want to be a part of Europe and Russia is against that!  This is the result.

 "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)" is a World War I song that rose to popularity after the war had ended. The lyrics highlight concern that American soldiers from rural environments would not want to return to farm life after experiencing the European city life and culture of Paris during World War I.

                                                                                                                           American soldiers at War                                                                                                                   

The US was never worried about losing citizens to other ways or countries, forcing them to stay on their farms.  If you have something great to offer, as the United States has always had, you keep on improving it to make it even better, and you will find yourself with people clamoring to enter, not to leave, as has happened to the USA.  The trick is not to follow the ways of Europe, such as socialism, but stay the course of being an American country with its own unique value system; being great for one and all.  To be an example of living for others should be this country's motto.  

Putin says he deserves Ukraine as consolation after losing the White House, quotes the New Yorker. 

  NATO Forces -  North Atlantic Treaty Organization:  Allies implemented the 2016 Warsaw Summit decisions to establish NATO’s forward presence in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and to develop a tailored forward presence in the Black Sea region. These decisions demonstrate Allies’ solidarity, determination and ability to defend Alliance territory.  They're also remembering the Nazi incursions into their homelands in the 1940's.  Now it's Russia they worry about, and Russia worries about them interfering with their dreams.  
                                             

       Russia is the huge yellow country on the right.  A section of Russia lies between Lithuania and Poland.  Belarus has been taken over by Russian domination, cooperating with them. like Syria.  We now watch on our TVs how Russia is encircling Ukraine, ready for the occupation and how the brave Ukrainians are standing their ground, fighting for their independence, their distain of Russian manipulation.  

Putin has become paranoid.  He fears Ukraine belonging to NATO, which has been extremely hard to enter, like a prestigious fraternity.  NATO refuses to enter and fight with Ukraine, even though it is turning into a mass slaughter, though Ukraine is holding out amazingly well, the best fighters of all of Europe without a doubt.  It's because they have everything to lose;  their country.  Israel goes through this same experience, and as Golda Meir explained, "We have no where else to go."  The United States displayed this same gutsy quality in 1776 against the British in gaining their independence on July 4, 1776. 

Nazis practiced unthinkable acts against 6 million Jews in squashing their lives; comparable to the shocking acts of Vikings of the Dark Ages.  They not only killed but tortured Jews in every respect.  The Jews were civilians, not soldiers, and they had suddenly become something like hunted-down animals to the Nazis.  it was unworthy of the homo-sapien population of 1939-1945, only showing their blood-thirsty tendencies had not advanced a hoot since the Viking days.

             Finally, end of WWIi and America rejoiced

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion). 

1945 should have seen the end of unbearable hatred and war, but it hasn't happened.  What Putin imagines what Ukraine has done to his Russian folk is what he would do to the Ukrainians and is doing to them now.  It's in his mind and heart.  I'm going to believe that though Ukraine's Eastern front has been more Russian than Ukrainian, and both have their own separate languages distinguishing them, they have been exposed to a more honest and improved people of Ukraine.  

In an undated photo taken during World War II, a Jewish man in western Ukraine is attacked by a mob next to a bust of Lenin.

The native Ukrainian's ancestors were horrible to their Jews, but after these several generations, have grown and developed into admirable people, amazingly actually voting for a Jew, finding him capable and likeable.  I'd say the moshiach has been on their doorstep for such a development. If they have been able to see Jews as people like themselves, surely they've seen their cousins in the Doubas region as people they'd treat as they would want to be treated. Ukrainians are a kinder people.  

Putin cannot use this ploy of them disrespecting laws of Humanitarianism of people in force today.   The rules of war, or international humanitarian law (as it is known formally) are a set of international rules that set out what can and cannot be done during an armed conflict. The main purpose of international humanitarian law (IHL) is to maintain some humanity in armed conflicts, saving lives and reducing suffering.  The Russians are breaking all the laws, hitting civilan centers; orphanages, kindergartens, hospitals, homes, etc. 

Resource

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/21/what-is-donbas-donetsk-luhansk-conflict/

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/putin-says-he-deserves-ukraine-as-consolation-for-losing-white-house

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

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/12/ukraine-holocaust-history-project