Humanity cries out
In anger and pain:
Russia’s gone too far
In re-taking the Ukraine.
Too bad, that same humanity
Had nothing to say
As 10,000 Jews
Were being gassed each day!
Many Jews have joined
The unanimous refrain;
Guess everyone’s forgotten
The killing fields of Ukraine.
Ukraine pogroms
From 1918-1921
Paved the way for genocide
Before the Shoah had begun.
At about 500 different sites
In that land,
Over 100,000 Jews were slaughtered
By popular demand.
The pogroms were public,
Participatory, and ritualized,
By all fronts Ukrainian
Authorized;
Scenes of torture and murder
Were carnivalesque,
Drunken singing and dancing,
Violent savagery, grotesque
Friends and neighbors, the army
All betrayed the Jews.
Declaration of the
Ukrainian People’s Republic
Supplied another excuse.
February 15, 1919,
In Proskuriv,
A Bolshevik uprising was stopped.
In the massacres that ensued,
Ukraine’s fine record was topped,
As Ukrainian troops crushed the Bolsheviks,
Regaining national power;
1,000 Jews were massacred
In the course of four hours.
Till the Holocaust,
Persecution in Germany
Was relatively rare;
But Nazis arriving in Ukraine
Found a killing ground there,
The unimaginable
Was already reality,
Ukrainian culture established
A heritage of atrocities.
The Nazis had helpers
In their nefarious campaign,
At the 1941 mass murder
In Babi Yar, Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of Jews
Who had managed to survive
Were forced to dig their own graves
And were buried alive.
Imagine the soil churning
As they struggled to breathe,
Like the blood of Zechariah
It continues to seethe.
Statues and street names
Of officials
Who helped the Nazis, still stand.
Ethnic cleansing was a service
Done for their motherland;
Vladimir Putin, who’s no saint,
Has Ukraine in his sights.
Wants to re-string
Russia’s necklace
Of satellites.
Hashem may have given
Putin this plan
To divert Russia’s interests
From Syria and Iran;
The borders of the world
Fluctuate by G-d’s word,
For Israel’s destiny
All victory, lost or conferred.
Please have rachamim, Hashem,
Lead Your exiles to freedom
From the corpse-filled nations,
From the wine-press of Edom.
By Sharon Marcus