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 Hassidic 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.
Later on Wednesday several prominent groups representing Holocaust survivors condemned Russia’s claim that its military action in Ukraine is aimed at “denazifying” the country.
“The signatories of this appeal denounce the use of the words ‘denazification’ and ‘genocide’ to justify the attack on Ukraine... We cannot accept that these words are tarnished in this way,” read a statement signed by representatives from the committees of several former Nazi concentration camps, including the International Auschwitz Committee, and those of Dachau, Buchenwald-Dora and Ravensbrueck.
Under Vladimir Putin, the Soviet victory in the second world war has become a major building block of Russian national identity, and Putin has attempted to portray modern Russia as the inheritor of this proud anti-Nazi heritage, even as his government has targeted minorities, reduced freedoms and is now waging an expansionist war.
Russia alleges, that since the Maidan revolution in 2014, Ukraine has been run by a far-right cabal, with Putin refering to the government in Kyiv as “a band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis”.
This is despite the fact that Zelenskiy is Jewish and came to power after a democratic election in which he beat the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko.
A statement from the management board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial centre, released on Tuesday before the missile strike, said: “Russia has vulgarly instrumentalised anti-Nazi rhetoric and is trying to take on the role of a fighter against Nazism.
“We remind the Russian leadership that Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities were last subjected to massive bombing by Nazi Germany during world war two. Now they are burning under the blows of Putin’s army, under the false and outrageous narrative of ‘denazifying’ Ukraine and its people.”
While there is a far-right movement in Ukraine, and elements of it have been active in fighting against Russia-backed forces in the east of the country, the movement has little political power or influence on the government. The Russian government has persisted with its narrative of a neo-Nazi government oppressing Russian speakers, despite the fact that Zelenskiy’s native language is Russian.
“It’s absolute and total nonsense,” said Rabbi Moshe Azman, the chief rabbi of Ukraine. “The country has democracy, it has freedom of speech and the president is Jewish. It’s simply a lie. The far-right parties didn’t even get into parliament.”
Azman, who was born in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, recorded an angry appeal to Russians and Russian Jews on Tuesday, clutching a Torah and criticising the lack of public outcry in Russia against the war.
“Remember that the people who are indifferent become accomplices in crimes against humanity,” he said.
