The video published by the Jewish Federation of Ukraine on its YouTube channel features three senior members of the Jewish community in Kyiv. The Kyivans are addressing Putin urging him to stop the war, withdraw his troops from Ukraine, and leave Ukraine alone. We repost this video adding English and German subtitles.
In the video, three senior citizens recall that during WWII their relatives were killed in Babyn Yar, a ravine in Kyiv where the Nazis executed more than 100,000 people, most of whom were Jews.
On 1 March, one of the Russian missiles targeting the Kyiv TV center and the TV tower hit the territory of the Baryn Yar Holocaust memorial, killing five civilians.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1498691146276560898
The video of Kyiv Jews urging Putin to get his troops out of Ukraine was recorded in the bomb shelter of Kyiv’s Jewish House and first appeared online on the next day after Putin’s strike on Babyn Yar.
Here is what the senior Kyivans had to say to the Russian president in their address.
“My name is Valentyna Yosypivna Romanova. I was born in Ukraine. On the 22nd of June, 1941, I met the war in Kyiv under bombing. My relatives perished in Babyn Yar. I met the day of 24 February 2022 again in Kyiv under the bombing and shelling. Putin! Take your away troops and get out from Ukraine. We want peace.”
“I’m Oleh Yakovych, born in 1940 in the city of Kyiv, my relatives perished in Babyn Yar in 1941. Now I am sitting in a bomb shelter and the enemy bombs are falling at me. Putin, get lost from Kyiv and from the whole of Ukraine.”
“I’m Tamara Oleksiivna, born in 1939, used to live in Kyiv before the war, a native to Kyiv, in the month of June (1941), the war had started. All my kin on my mother’s side – Jews – they had taken away those Jews to Babyn Yar and they all perished there. Today I meet this day in Kyiv as well, but now, this year this is a horrible thing. Putin, I wish you death! Leave us alone, you bastard, leave us so that we’d not see and hear you, who and what you are. We want peace!”
Read more:
- Ukraine’s Muslim leaders united against Putin’s war; Russia’s very much divided
- Russians view war in Ukraine as defensive ‘holy struggle’ of ‘us against the world’ and back Putin, Russian sociologist says
- Nearly 60% of Russians support Putin’s war against Ukraine
- “Your heroes are our nightmare”: Israeli Ambassador on Ukraine relations and Holodomor recognition (2021)
- Moscow seeks to use Babyn Yar against Ukrainians; Ukrainians want a memorial to the victims (2021)
- “Holocaust Disneyland” on mass graves in Kyiv – result of weak national memory policy (2020)
- Russian oligarchs push Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial project which discredits Ukraine – Zissels (2018)
