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Jewish Life in Ukraine Is No Longer What It Was

(Washington Post) Yonat Shimron - For many Jews, Ukraine evokes memories of pogroms, anti-Semitism and Nazi collaboration. Between 1.2 million and 1.6 million Jews were killed in Ukraine during the Holocaust. But Jewish life in Ukraine is no longer what it was - neither under the Nazis nor the Soviet Union. In 2019 Ukraine elected a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, by a landslide 73%. "Today's generation is certainly not anti-Semitic like it was in the Soviet Union," said Andrej Umansky, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Jewish Civilization who grew up in Kyiv. In fact, "We know so much more about what happened in Ukraine to the Jews, thanks to Ukrainian scholars," many of whom are not Jewish. A 2017 Pew Research study found that Ukraine was the most accepting of Jews among all Central and Eastern European countries. Only 5% of Ukrainians said they would not accept Jews as fellow citizens. In Russia it was 14%, in Poland 18% and in Romania 22%.
2022-03-07 00:00:00
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