Controversial, but interesting
(www.nytimes.com)
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from the article:
Ukraine’s Newly Elected President Is Jewish. So Is Its Prime Minister.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish comedian recently elected the president of Ukraine. Jewish prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, Ukraine now has the world’s third- or fourth-largest Jewish community, but estimates of its size vary wildly, ranging from 120,000 to 400,000 people, depending on who is counting.
in Switzerland a self-exiled Ukrainian billionaire, Ihor Kolomoisky, who is Jewish. Mr. Zelensky’s connections to Mr. Kolomoisky... the comedian is simply a puppet in a sinister web of influence controlled by the oligarch. Mr. Kolomoisky’s Ukrainian television company, 1+1, has been a big buyer of Mr. Zelensky’s comedy shows.
While shadowed by accusations of corruption, Mr. Kolomoisky is widely respected in Dnipro because of the role he played in saving the city from conquest by Russian-armed separatists who grabbed swaths of Ukrainian territory farther east. He is particularly popular with local Jews, having invested tens of millions of dollars to build what is billed as the world’s largest Jewish community center, a gigantic complex in the center of the city.
Communist rule after the 1917 revolution brought an end to anti-Semitism as state policy. Mr. Shchupak, the historian, said anti-Semitism, while not officially promoted by the Soviet authorities, was so rife that his own parents “were ashamed they were Jews.” He found out only when classmates in school saw records that gave his “nationality” as Jewish.
Jews, the archbishop said, think of themselves as “God’s chosen people, and think they should be in charge.” But they pose far less danger than “schismatics,” he said, who are “breaking the unity of the Slavic world.”