Started by Madrona Murphy
Jan 27, 2024

On July 1, 1941, Nazi infantrymen gathered all of the men, women and children in the town of Stavisht (Stavishche), a short distance south of Kiev, and shot them, all of them, exterminating the town. Among them were members of the Barshatsky (Ukrainian Barchadskaya) family that had not already emigrated to the United States a generation earlier. My father’s cousins. I was born nine years later. I grew up in a New York immigrant neighborhood where most of my childhood friends were the children of European and Chinese refugees. Many of my friends’ parents had numbers tattooed on their forearms.

It is unnerving to feel so close to such tragedy. Millions died, but a dozen of them would have been my own aunts and uncles and cousins, had they survived. It was deep enough a hurt that my father and his siblings never spoke about our lost relatives. I never heard their names. By sheer chance I learned about them long after my father’s death, in a recent publication of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Center.

The coincidence of discovering my roots in the Ukraine and the Holocaust, at a time when both Ukraine and Israel are at war, has been humbling and troubling. Ukrainians are plainly fighting for their survival; for the fourth time in the last century (Russian pogroms, Stalin’s famines, Nazi occupation, now Russians once again). Russian missiles are falling on the fields and pastures where my family were once peasants. I am outraged by the growing indifference of Americans to the needless deaths of Ukrainians who simply do not want to return, once again, to being serfs to a haughty and cruel Tsar. As a veteran of 20 years in United Nations diplomacy in human rights and the environment, working often with Eastern Europeans, I believe that Ukraine is Putin’s Czechoslovakia; Donetsk and Crimea the Sudetenland of this new wave of imperialism in Europe.

But I am even more outraged, frankly, by the misuse of the Holocaust, of the deaths of millions of people including my own paternal relatives, by the Netanyahu government to excuse the destruction of Gaza and the pursuit of a war plan that will certainly lead to another generation of fratricide between Palestinians and Israelis. As a former United Nations “expert” on human rights, I agree with the concerns raised in the ICJ by the Republic of South Africa about genocide (and short of genocide, clear violations of the Geneva -Conventions). Even more, I am angry and ashamed that the Israeli state should argue that Jews, as victims of an attempted genocide, cannot morally be accused of genocide themselves, regardless of their actions. Sorry, brothers and sisters, but the victims of terrible abuse are quite capable of becoming abusers. Being a victim is not a free pass to becoming a “wrathful God”.

I have heard gentle and thoughtful rabbis reason that as victims of a monstrous crime, Jews should be the first in line to defend the lives and freedom of others, and to pursue justice for all peoples. That is the way I choose to honor the memory of my murdered Ukrainian relatives. And because of this, I feel that I must publicly condemn the wanton destruction of Gaza by the Israeli state.

Of course, according to House Resolution 894, that makes me “antisemitic”. I am sure that my paternal grandfather, Joseph Barshatsky, a victim of pogroms, would have found that very funny.

Comment by Diana Sheridan
Feb 1, 2024

We certainly identify with the Jewish part of our family life. We celebrate Jewish holidays with our Jewish daughter and son-in law as well as their two children. Since they were very young, every year when we visited them in Berkeley Ed went to their Hebrew schools and told stories. Our daughter Elissa and granddaughter Mira both speak Hebrew and have gone ... Read All

Comment by Helane Wahbeh
Jan 29, 2024

Thank you so much for your wonderful sharing. As a Palestinian living on Lopez, I am grateful to hear your voice. It is disheartening to see the cycle of victim and tyrant acted out not just in the Middle East but around the world. Like Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” I think it will take a different mindse ... Read All

Comment by Roseamber Sumner
Jan 29, 2024

Thank you Russel. It is important to keep these horrible conflicts in our minds and hearts and to put words to our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. It is important to do this because, although our lives here on Lopez are generally blessed, we are all connected. This tiny blue green ball whirling in the vast cosmos of the universe is where we all struggle t ... Read All

Comment by Nathan Sanders
Jan 29, 2024

Thank you for you eloquent, insightful, and sobering reflection Russell.

Comment by Mike Colyar
Jan 28, 2024

Another thank you.

As a non member of any belief system beyond rationality and empathy, it would be a knee jerk reaction for me to sit back and say, “Ho hum. Another family feud between Abrahamics. But as soon as I pay any attention to either ... Read All

Comment by Bruce Richardson
Jan 28, 2024

Thank you, Russell, for your informed and insightful comments! We are totally on your page, We also want to see an independent Palestinian country. Mindy and Bruce Richardson