Israeli Jewish groups condemn strike that hit Kyiv Holocaust site

JERUSALEM – Jewish groups in Israel have condemned a deadly Russian attack that hit the site of a Nazi massacre, an incident that Ukraine’s president said yesterday marked an assault on his nation’s identity.

The attack on Tuesday night damaged Kyiv’s main television mast at Babi Yar, the scene of World War II’s biggest slaughter of the city’s Jews and a place of memorial and pilgrimage.

Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance centre voiced “vehement condemnation” in response to “pictures of the deadly Russian attack on the vicinity of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial site”.

“Babi Yar was the site where over a two-day period in September 1941, special Nazi killing squads...(murdered) some 33,000 Jews as part of the ideology of genocide,” it said.

“Rather than being subjected to blatant violence, sacred sites like Babi Yar must be protected.”

Ukrainian-born Nathan Sharansky, a Jewish dissident who moved to Israel in 1986 after spending years in the Soviet gulag, also condemned the attack.

“We must not allow the truth to – once again – become the victim of war,” said Sharansky, a top adviser to the Babi Yar memorial centre.

Five people were killed in the strike itself, according to Ukrainian authorities, and for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the symbolism of the location underlined the Russian threat to Ukrainian identity.

“They know nothing about our capital. About our history. But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all,” he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion force.

Zelenskyy, who visited the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem in 2020, also urged Jewish people to speak up.

“I am now addressing all the Jews of the world. Don’t you see what is happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world not remain silent right now,” he said. 

Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who has described Russia’s attack on Ukraine as a “violation of the international order”, also condemned the Babi Yar attack and said Israel stood for “preserving and respecting the sanctity of the site”.

Beyond Lapid’s comments, Israel’s government has taken a cautious approach to the Ukraine crisis, citing its warm ties with both Kyiv and Moscow and security cooperation with Russian forces which have a large presence in Syria on Israel’s northern border.

In response to a reporter’s question yesterday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett avoided direct condemnation of the Russian strike. – AFP, March 3, 2022