In 1914 my Zaida deserted the Russian Army into which he had been conscripted, snuck back to his small town 50 miles south of Kiev (as it was spelled until recently), grabbed my Bubba and somehow made their way to Liverpool where they sailed to Philadelphia.
To be sure, I was raised 100% Jewish with what is now Ukraine just the unfortunate part of the Pale of Settlement my ancestors happened to live.
While I have no direct knowledge, the years after my Zaida left were certainly devastating to any remaining family. The 30’s saw a horrifying massacre of hundreds of Jews by the residents of my Zaida’s old hometown. The 40’s brought the Nazis with infamous massacres like Babi Yar outside Kiev where 33,000 Jews were killed in murder pits in a mere two days with a fair amount of help from the local population.
Between the murder of 1.5 million Jews, deportations and emigration only 100,000 remained of prewar estimates of over 2 million Jews in Ukraine at the end of WWII.
Flash forward to the 1990’s when I fell hard for and married the love of my life from a family of proud Ukrainian Americans. I was immediately accepted and happily stuffed with kielbasa and pierogies. My wife and I lived in Manhattan near the Kiev Restaurant, the most missed of our favorite long ago closed old school New York restaurants. They literally had the most delicious versions of staples from both sides of our family: kielbasi, pierogies and stuffed cabbage for the Ukrainians; blintzes, challah and potato latkes for the Jewcrainians. Of course we got Kiev takeout to self-cater our small home family wedding.
Now Ukraine is being led by the inspirational Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Jewish comedian who… WHAT?!? How the heck did that happen? I didn’t even know there were any Jews left in Ukraine. Turns out there are maybe a couple hundred thousand in a country of 40 million that elected a Jew in a landslide with over 73% of the vote. That’s progress on a scale probably far beyond Barack Obama becoming President of the United States.
First Zelenskyy stood up to two-bit thug Donald Trump who was holding back delivery of critical weapons, the exact weapons brave Ukrainians are using today to fight for their nation, unless Zelenskyy dirtied himself up by producing Trumped-up charges against Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Now he’s rallying his nation and the world by staying put to heroically confront actual murderous supervillain Vladimir Putin at great risk to his and his family’s lives.
But it’s not just my fellow tribe-member Zelenskyy with whom I identify. The entire Ukrainian nation, the government, the army, the regular folk filling Molotov cocktails and learning how to shoot rifles are my heroes. In sharp contrast to pro-Putin sore loser Trump, Petro Poroshenko, the incumbent President whom Zelenskyy clobbered to win office, is out on the streets fighting for his nation. And all the Ukrainians who withstood Russian threats and an installed puppet government, taking to the streets in 2014 to choose democracy and a better future for their country are my brothers and sisters.
Yes folks, sometimes a nation can learn from their dark history and choose to move toward a better world with courage and conviction. And my dear fellow Ukrainians are leading the way.
