Leaders of Dnipro’s thriving Jewish community speak out about their history, their country, and their rejection of Vladimir Putin’s lies about “denazification”
He sits in a small office in front of a big screen showing an interactive map of military actions taking place nearby — Dnipro, where almost one million people live, the biggest Ukrainian city close to the frontline. Now, it is the major humanitarian and logistical hub, providing backup support for three Ukrainian regions at war.
“When the first missile hit our house in Mariupol, we moved to a flat in my husband’s parents’ house,” Julia tells me. “When that one was damaged, we went to my mother’s flat; it also felt unsafe, so we went to the basement. There was no heating, water, or electricity for weeks. We cooked on firewood from the street and melted snow as water. At the end of March, the shelling was everywhere. We had already lost everything, so we decided to risk leaving, not waiting for the corridor.
“Right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, local Jews were frightened, they were ashamed to admit they were Jewish, as if they felt some guilt,” he recalls. “Now, I feel proud to be a Jew here. Look at me? Do you see the hat, the beard? I look quite Jewish, don’t I? And I walk here freely. Before COVID, up to 60,000 people from all over Ukraine, but also the U.S. and Israel, came here to celebrate Passover — that’s how we lived.
He waves off Putin’s excuse for waging the war under the name of so-called de-Nazification. “We should understand that this war is simple: evil against good,” he says, anger rising in his voice. “Any normal person understands this. And it’s God’s providence that President Zelensky is a Jew so we can undermine Russian propaganda.”.
For many years, the Rostovtsev organization took care of about 600 lonely elderly people in the town. One of them is Eva Abramivna Anpilogova , a former lawyer. She is 96, born in Dnipro, remembers the Holodomor. She recalls how, in August 1941, she escaped on foot with her mom from Dnipro when the bridges were destroyed and Nazis occupied the town: “For three months, we lived in a train station in a town in Central Asia. We almost starved, I remember I couldn’t wash my hair for three months.
Eva Abramivna wasn’t a fan of Zelensky. “He is a comedian, he doesn’t know the military or how to run them.” But now she feels empathy for “how he fights to support Ukraine and suffers for our people. How long can Putin be in power? I wish dogs would eat him.”either volunteer or are mobilized into the Ukrainian army. The first man I see in the city civic military headquarters has both a kippah and a gun. There, I meet Colonel Pavlo Khazan, from a well-known Dnipro Jewish scientist family.
“Pure heroism — that’s the worst of this war,” he says. “The fact the military is holding the city is against any military book, they shouldn’t be there by now.”
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