The Ukrainian Jewish community has a long and terrible history of persecution. According to The National WWII Museum, during the Holocaust “an estimated 1.5 million Jews were shot to death at close range in ravines, open fields, and forests. Based on present-day borders, one in every four Jewish victims of the Holocaust was murdered in Ukraine.”
Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Jewish community was once again growing. According to Jewish Policy Research the core Jewish population of Ukraine was estimated to be 56,000 while those that qualified for Israeli citizenship, under the Israeli Law of Return, stood at an estimated 200,000.
According to the World Jewish Congress, Ukraine’s Jewish population is the fourth largest in Europe. Due to the slow pace of the war, there has been an opportunity for many to leave, and Israel is working hard to help them. The Jewish Tablet magazine reported that:
“There are Jewish Agency emissaries at the different border crossings from Ukraine into Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova, trying to get the buses through after their journeys from the burning cities.”
The Jewish Agency itself has said that it “provided close to 300 buses so far to rescue Jews from Ukraine to bring them across the borders.”
Amira Ahronoviz, the CEO and Director General of the Jewish Agency in Israel, said the agency has teams working 24/7: “They are working on the ground... to literally save the lives, save the lives of thousands of our brothers and sisters, Jews who are fleeing out of Ukraine, under fire from the war zone to six different border stations and facilities that we have formed in order to help them save their lives.”
Further to the thousands of Jews who continue to make their journey back to Israel from Ukraine are those coming from Russia and Belarus. The total number that have made aliyah this year is now over 23,000 with thousands more in the pipeline.