Pharaoh was vanquished – and Putin will be too

In the old days and in the present: Putin’s bombs have soiled the memory of the Holocaust, with a 96-year-old survivor of the camps among the thousands killed. The memorial at Babyn Yar, where the Nazis and their collaborators murdered 33,771 Jews over two days in September 1941, was bombed on 1 March this year. Commemoration there had been forbidden until the 1990s, and now once more the words of the dissident Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko ring true: “Over Babyn Yar there are no monuments.”

The unfolding tragedies show just how perverse Putin’s claims that he is “denazifying” Ukraine are. While this war isn’t the Holocaust, horrific as it is, there are lessons that are still profound. Oppressive pharaohs and dictators have always striven for absolute power by casting certain groups as unworthy or in the way. This time it’s Ukrainians who have been singled out. 

When Jews retell the story of the Exodus on Passover, each generation is meant to feel as if we ourselves have also been slaves in Egypt. We are prompted through story and symbolic foods to experience the bitterness of slavery next to the sweetness of freedom. For many British Jews, the millions of refugees escaping Ukraine also remind us of our own ancestors who fled that region from persecution to safety, and of those who weren’t so lucky to leave before the unimaginable devastation of the Holocaust. Our past and our present intermingle, again and again, in the geography and in the deeds that we witness. 

I’ve seen immense solidarity as people from all backgrounds sense and recoil at the terror that so many Ukrainians feel as they are sheltering or trapped. One heartening sight is that of residents of neighbouring countries flocking to the border to support refugees on their journeys. Maybe one lesson has been learnt, at least for now, at least by some. At home, widespread calls for further sanctions and for accepting refugees tells me that many people are not switching off when they turn on the news. It is heartening that British people are demanding a more welcoming policy towards refugees. Our community has raised its voice and opened its homes. Having seen tyrants rise again and again, we have an opportunity to create redemptive strength in Ukraine’s moment of need, starting with how we welcome “the stranger”, the refugee, into our own homes. We should not let up the pressure on the government to be more generous and more efficient in administrating the entry of refugees. 

Brutality and aggression must never prevail. This message of Passover applies to all of us, of all faiths, and none. On Passover, I will again be reminded that the Israelites, my ancestors, were not wiped out. We are still here, and so will the Ukrainian people be for many years to come.