On March 1, a Russian missile strike that appeared to target a TV tower in Ukraine’s capital struck the vicinity of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial.
“As a person whose family is laid to rest in Babi Yar, I am in excruciating pain watching the news,” said Brovarnik, who, along with other Holocaust survivors interviewed by NBC News, spoke in Russian. “I never thought this could happen in a million years.”
According to Masha Pearl, the executive director of The Blue Card, a national organization that provides financial assistance to “poverty-stricken Holocaust survivors,” “Many of the Russian-speaking Holocaust survivors and the Ukrainian Holocaust survivors are experiencing and reliving trauma, and this is triggering PTSD from their wartime years.”
Anatoly Sukhorukov, 78, said he “absolutely cannot watch any of this without tearing up and crying immediately.”
Sukhorukov was born into a Jewish family in Moscow toward the end of World War II and was evacuated to River Ural. He said he is having a hard time sleeping because of what is happening in Ukraine.
He said he feels deeply disturbed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “denazification” claims.
“I feel it’s a disgusting lie,” Sukhorukov said. “It’s a strategy for Putin. I feel that Putin is playing on the feelings of Russians who truly despise Nazis.”
Daniel Zeltser, the CEO of the Kings Bay Y, works closely with the Russian and Ukrainian Jewish community. He said for Holocaust survivors and their descendents, “these notions of ‘denazifying’ Ukraine and then seeing Babi Yar bombed make the words of ‘never again’ almost meaningless.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
