kyiv, the capital of a state dominated by Nazi elites, in the words of Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, said goodbye on Thursday to Matityagu Anton Samborskii, son of the chief rabbi of Ukraine. Rabbi Moshe Azman held back tears as he lamented that Russia’s way of “denazifying Ukraine” is by killing Jews like his Anton. Samborskii died fighting on the Pokrovsk front in the Donbas region, a city currently besieged by the invaders.
Samborskii’s funeral ceremony in kyiv’s central synagogue attracted dozens of journalists, as well as relatives who wanted to say their last goodbyes to the 33-year-old. It was an intimate ceremony compared to the large Orthodox funerals of Ukrainian fighters in Kiev’s St. Michael’s Cathedral or the Greek Catholic military church in Lviv. But the symbolism of the event was greater because the Ukrainian Jews, with the presence of the Israeli ambassador, Michael Brodsky, in the front row, wanted to show Russia that not only is the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Jewish, but that soldiers who die defending their homeland are also Jewish.
Samborskii’s death is a tale of wartime misery shared by thousands of other soldiers, whatever their faith. He was drafted in May, coinciding with the coming into force of the new law on the mobilisation of civilians. He received only one month of training, according to his father, and was already fighting by July. On 24 July he went missing in action and it was only recently that his body was recovered. Samborskii’s first daughter was born a week before he was drafted.
The funeral was attended by soldiers from various brigades, including from Azov, a regiment with roots in the far right and which has been a recurring element of Russian propaganda accusing Ukraine of being a neo-Nazi dictatorship. Olena Tolkacheva, a representative of the Azov patronage in support of fighters, explained that she had come because of the regiment’s appreciation for Rabbi Azman, for the efforts he made to evacuate civilians and soldiers from Azov who were besieged in the battle of Mariupol.
The military personnel present at the funeral did not want to reveal which brigade Samborsky served in, although Tolkacheva confirmed that it was not in Azov. Nor did the chief rabbi of Ukraine’s team know how many Jews fight in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, or how many have died for their country. A captain of the 108th Brigade of the Territorial Defence Forces simply told this newspaper that “there are many Jews in the army, as well as many of their dead.”
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
The World Jewish Congress estimates that in 2023 there were about 45,000 Jews living in Ukraine – 2% of the total population. A decade earlier, there were 71,500. Many have taken refuge abroad or live on the aid that the central synagogue in kyiv itself distributes every day.
Ukraine was, along with Poland, the country in which Nazi Germany killed the most Jews during World War II. At Samborskii’s funeral, Boris Zabarko, chairman of the Ukrainian Association of Jews and Former Prisoners of the Ghetto and Nazi Concentration Camps, spoke. Zabarko is 89 years old and was interned in a ghetto in Vinnytsia province during World War II. Zabarko stressed in his speech that, unlike then, “when the Jews were abandoned to God, today they have the support of great alliances both in Ukraine and in Israel.”
Israel and Russia
In perfect German, learned during his years as a scientist in the former East Germany, Zabarko says that the vast majority of Ukrainian society supports Israel in the war against Hamas and Hezbollah. This opinion is consistent with the numerous public statements and assessments of Ukrainian citizens since the start of the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2023. Ukrainian support for Israel contrasts, however, with the conciliatory attitude of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government towards Putin: Israel has neither supported Western sanctions against Russia nor delivered a single weapon to Ukraine. Bilateral relations between Netanyahu and Zelensky have been tense, including diplomatic conflicts and threats between embassies.
“Israel may not give us weapons, but it does help us, with medicines and humanitarian supplies,” Zabarko replied. He and other Ukrainian Jews interviewed declined to criticise the Israeli authorities for their lesser commitment to Ukraine. The central message of the speeches during the funeral service was to make clear that if there is any fascist state, it is Russia.
“Have you seen Nazis in Ukraine? I haven’t,” exclaimed in April 2022 in an interview with Morning Express in Odessa another Holocaust survivor and friend of Zabarko, Roman Shvarcman. The journalist did not answer, but he could have said yes, although they are minority groups, as there are in other European countries, including Spain. For example, in the summer of 2022, in a performance hall located on the same corner as the central synagogue in kyiv, a concert was being held there in tribute to the deceased Taras Bobanich, commander of the military unit of Pravi Sektor, a far-right political group. In addition to the ultra-nationalist paraphernalia common among military audiences, a few veterans of this movement wore SS emblems and swastikas. To immortalize the moment, a dozen of them went out into the street, with the synagogue as a testimony, and were photographed making the fascist salute.
Follow all the international information atFacebook andXor inour weekly newsletter.
