hello fellow students of jewish history if you're like me you're following the news from
ukraine very carefully and you'll see that one of the figures that frequently appears
in the news commentary is one vitaly klitschko who is the mayor of cave and he provides some
very you know insightful observations as to what was happening in ukraine's capital city
and as i was watching him i began to suspect you know he just seems like certain aspects of his
presentation are characteristically jewish so i thought i'd look a little further into it and
sure enough there is a jewish backstory to vitaly klitschko it's quite fascinating it says a lot as
well about the ukrainian jewish past and i think also about the ukrainian jewish future so i read
that leslie weiss who is the deputy director of the national coalition supporting eurasian jewry
recently gave an interview in what she said but as you know ukraine is led by a jewish president
of course she's referring to velodemir zelensky she continues the defense minister as jewish as
is the president's chief of staff many members of the cabinet are jewish the mayor of kiev klitschko
tells us about his jewish grandmother every time we see him and that is in fact the story
his father's mother was jewish and i'll tell you a little bit more about how that affected him in
a moment so that would make his father certainly jewish by traditional standards it would not make
klitschko himself jewish by traditional the standards which regards matrilineal dissent
as what determines jewish status of course there are different opinions in 21st century
america but that's a matter of some controversy klitschko does not personally identify as jewish
his wife is not jewish as well but nevertheless he is not ashamed of his jewish background in fact
he has mentioned interviews that he's very proud to have jewish ancestry he's a very impressive
figure overall uh he is a world heavyweight boxing champion he holds multiple titles he
is the current mayor of kiev as i mentioned and articulate in at least three languages russian
ukrainian and english although sometimes his uh statements in english tend to be a little bit
pungent and colorful and there are three things about him that really made me think that he's
going to have some kind of jewish story going on the first is that he is highly educated this is
very typical for jews particularly those living in urban environments he holds a candidate now degree
which is sort of like a phd assistant professor level in the united states he wrote a dissertation
on boxing he is a polyglot right speaking multiple languages with considerable fluency that's
also very characteristic of many jews and thirdly and this is the one that really did it for me he
listens to his mother his brother is also world champion boxer yet they have never fought publicly
maybe in private i don't know and the reason they have never had a professional fight together is
because their mother promised them not to do so and the fact that he listens to his mother
all of a sudden makes me think this is someone we should listen to a little bit more carefully
now we should not be put off by the fact that he is a professional boxer because after all
there is a very long tradition of jewish activity in the martial arts
daniel mendoza was one of the most famous of the pioneers of the pugilistic sport uh his years
are 1764 to 1836 and he really developed a lot of techniques and that that apparently went into what
are considered the standard elements of modern boxing today his class so the idea of jews being
very physical and being active specifically in martial arts is nothing new but there's a
fascinating interview that i listened to recently uh that vitaly klitschko gave with this journalist
dmitry gordon and it was fascinating it's really worth listening to even if you don't understand
russian you can like put on the subtitles and kind of figure out what's going on i strongly
recommend that you zip to 11 25 time marker 11 25 and then you'll hear him in his own words
and what he describes there is how uh his father was a career soldier he was in the soviet military
and constantly moving around to many different bases he kept his jewish identity on the down
low because of the reality of soviet anti-semitism which was particularly prevalent in the military
but at home they frequently spoke about his mother who was jewish and during the holocaust
she was hidden in a chest by her husband during all of these nazis searches that would go on
during the occupational period and this went on for months and months and uh klitschko speaks
about the tremendous impact this made on him as a child and and i ironically there are elements
of his past through uh his mother's side that relate to the holodomur the great terror famine
that occurred in 1932-33 under stalin and on his father's side to the holocaust and he relates to
the holocaust in a distinctly ukrainian manner specifically through this mixed heritage he
remarks in this interview how very proud he is that yad vashem has a record of his jewish
family and the tribulations that they went through through the holocaust and he poses in this
interview a challenge for himself and for future mayors of ukraine he speaks very forcibly here
he says that in jerusalem there are places like yad vashem right it was very one of the world's
greatest centers for the memorialization and the study of the holocaust he says in jerusalem there
was no holocaust in washington in los angeles there was no holocaust right these are both
cities which have very famous holocaust museums and research institutes how is it he continues
that in babinyar right in the middle of kiev where a hundred thousand people were shot almost nothing
appeared there for 80 years tiny memorial which incidentally was recently bombed by the russians
in ukraine he continues the places of executions are not marked and many people go on picnics there
and walk their dogs on mass graves and so he sets for himself and for future mayors the challenge
of putting energy into developing an understanding of the holocaust in ukraine i think that's
extremely important it's ironic that he gave this this interview in november of 2021 and just a few
months later of course he would be embroiled in a war which in many ways bespeaks many of the
tragedies and the cruelties that were seen during the einsteins group and massacres the so-called
holocaust by bullets in places like bucha and and but that's getting beside our point right now he
also notes that at babiad many people who pulled the triggers also had family values also loved
their children yet they could shoot the children of defenseless people they could shoot the elderly
and he asked pachomu and he says it's important for us to answer this question because the world
is very fragile so a fascinating individual who in many ways speaks to the ukrainian jewish past
which is far more complex than most people really realize and also hopefully for an optimistic
ukrainian jewish future where we're looking towards ways of understanding this complex
and very difficult and painful past so vitaly klitschko i can say he is definitely not a
lightweight he is actually a heavyweight thank you very much for watching this brief video
you