Edited by: TJVNews.com
Speaking to the world and to the global Jewish community, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued an emotionally riveting video about the Russian bombing of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial on Tuesday.
In his video address, Zelensky called on the international Jewish community to not remain silent about the violence that the Russians are perpetrating on his country and its citizenry.
Zelensky delivered his remarks after yet another night of heavy fighting. The Russian rockets fell adjacent to Babyn Yar, the Kyiv site where Nazis and local collaborators executed tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. JTA reported that he said that this along with the Russian bombing several days ago of Uman, (the Ukrainian city where hundreds of thousands of observant Jews pray each Rosh HaShana), represent an attempt to erase Ukraine’s history and identity.
Babyn Yar, formerly known as Babi Yar, is the name of a ravine on Kyiv’s outskirts where Nazi troops (with help from Ukrainian collaborators) brutally murdered approximately 33,771 Jews in massacres that took place from September 29-30 in 1941.
Wikipedia reported that the decision to kill all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. Sonderkommando 4a as the sub-unit of Einsatzgruppe C, along with the aid of the SD and Order Police battalions with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police backed by the Wehrmacht, carried out the orders.
Zelensky said: “Addressing all the Jews of the world: Don’t you see why this happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world do not remain silent right now. Nazism is born in silence. So shout about the killings of civilians. Shout about the killings of Ukrainians.”
Jews and Jewish groups around the world have stepped in to support Ukrainian Jews, who number between 43,000 and over 300,000, depending on how the estimate is made. Many of those Jews have joined an exodus of refugees pouring over the country’s borders, according to the JTA report.
In the eight-minute address, which his office published with English subtitles and in Hebrew translation, Zelensky did not mention that he himself is Jewish or that his own family members were killed by Nazis.
JTA reported that Zelensky’s anguish over seeing a Holocaust killing site attacked was palpable, as he described how a TV station and sports complex had under Soviet rule been “built on the bones” of people murdered there “to erase the true history of Babyn Yar.”
To Russia, he said, “You are killing Holocaust victims for the second time.”
“To the world: What is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating…” Zelensky tweeted immediately after Tuesday’s attack, which drew widespread condemnation from Jews and others.
