Part of Jewish history in Ukraine is indeed a surfeit of graves. However, to rephrase the oldest Jewish lesson from history: We know the heart of the refugee, for we were refugees.

Blessed at last with an independent country and coming to terms with a double-edged history, should Israel welcome Ukranian refugees?

Read the this writer’s opinion.

When Russia attacked Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin stated that his goal was “denazification.” Historians agree that there is no substance to this claim—and that by invoking Nazism, Putin is attempting to weaponize the trauma of World War II to justify an invasion, and the many lives it has cost.

Today, life for Jews in Ukraine has changed dramatically. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish; in 2019, he won the presidency with 73 percent of the vote. Compared with other countries, Ukraine scores fairly low on measurements of antisemitic incidents and attitudes.

Read the interview with Ira N. Forman, Obama’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, about Jewish life in Ukraine—its fraught history, its remarkable evolution—and how it continues to affect the Russian invasion.

Helen moved to Ukraine from the United States ten years ago. The move was supposed to be temporary—her husband, a venture capitalist, had invested in Ukrainian start-ups—but the couple ended up staying. “It was quite challenging in the beginning, but over time, the country has grown on me,” Helen tells me over zoom.

“It’s heartbreaking and impossible to comprehend what’s happening in Ukraine now,” she says.

Helen was actually born in Ukraine but moved to the United States in 1988 because of the antisemitism at the time. But being a Jew in Ukraine is different now Helen says. “It’s cool to be Jewish now. My gentile students go around with Magen David necklaces and are trying to learn Hebrew.”

Read regular updates from Helen in her Kyiv Diary about what life is like in Kyiv as the Russians continue their bombardment and try to lay siege to the city.