Echoes Of Ukraine's Past Speak More Loudly, As Holocaust Survivors Harangue Putin
The optimism of a post-Cold War world now lies in amidst Ukraine's rubble
Decades of Ukraine's past have come flying out of the pages of history books, ever since Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered his invasion of the sovereign, democratic nation to Russia’s west.
No more so than when Russian troops bombed a sacred Holocaust memorial in Ukraine's capital or — even more so — when survivors of the Holocaust themselves cursed Putin on video and asked for peace.
Russian forces, who thus far have struggled surprisingly against Ukrainian resistance, bombed the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial site in Kyiv Tuesday.
Babyn Yar is a ravine that marks the site of one of the worst Nazi massacres of World War II where more than 30,000 Jews were murdered.
“This is the reality of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. Bombs are falling on the Babyn Yar Memorial, the site of one of the worst massacres of Jews during WWII. Putin follows in the steps of his Soviet predecessors in desecrating the memory of the Holocaust,” the American Jewish Committee tweeted.
Prominent historian Michael Beschloss noted that it was less than six months ago that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky laid a wreath at the now-bombed memorial.
“Zelensky for Nobel Peace Prize?” Beschloss added.
Pages from newspapers printed today look as though they could have come from the 1940s, many observers — including one-time strategist for President Barack Obama, David Axelrod — noted.
“This poignant photo of refugees fleeing the Russian assault reminds me of my late father, who, as a child, was forced with his family to flee Ukraine during another wave of wanton violence,” he tweeted above a photo of Wednesday's front page of The New York Times.
Through his Twitter feed, historian Beschloss lamented that where Ukraine is today is nowhere near where world leaders expected at the end of the Cold War and Ukraine's independence in 1991.
He pointed out how quickly then-Ukranian President Leonid Kravchuk agreed to give up nuclear weapons left on his nation’s soil upon the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Even more ruefully, perhaps, Beschloss tweeted a famous photo of then-President Ronald Reagan, President-elect George HW Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev all standing in a windswept scene with New York City — and the twin towers of the World Trade Center which would come down by terrorist hands — in the background.
“Against an ominous backgriound, [sic] three leaders in December 1988, looking radiantly forward to a future that was never to be,” Beschloss lamented.
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