“Since I was small, my grandmother always told me to hide the fact I was Jewish,” said Kostiantyn, 33, who asked that his family’s surname be withheld out of concern for relatives he left behind in the conflict zone. “Now I don’t care what people say about me being Jewish. The only people who have helped here have been the Jews.”
(...)
Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident from Donetsk who moved to Israel in the 1980s, recalled a recent conversation with non-Jews who also fled eastern Ukraine.
“They told me it was not fair that Jews had such special privileges,” said Sharansky, who has visited Ukraine several times in recent months. “They said, ‘We, too, lost our properties and are refugees, but they have help and can go to Israel.’ It was weird for me to hear, because when I grew up in Donetsk, being Jewish was like having a mortal disease.”
More: Washington Post
No comments:
Post a Comment