In 2022, Russian rockets hit a Jewish memorial in Kiev – the place where German occupiers killed an estimated 100,000 people about 80 years earlier. Since then, a rabbi has been fighting Russian propaganda with videos.
“Everything is different now,” sings Moshe Asman in one of his music videos about the major Russian attack. The rabbi of the Kiev Brodsky Synagogue stands at the microphone in a white shirt, short white hair, a long graying beard, very light blue eyes. In the approximately four minutes of video, Moshe Asman walks past the mass graves of killed civilians, black body bags in Butscha, destroyed black-burned houses, and wrecked cars in which people died.
He takes things in with a serious expression. Sometimes in a thick blue jacket in the snowstorm. Sometimes with a protective vest and helmet, sometimes with a black stiff hat and coat in the winding Brodsky Synagogue in Kiev, where his office is at the top.
“Before the major attack, I wasn't as active as I am now,” he says, leaning back in the heavy brown leather chair. “I didn't like that PR stuff.” But Russia spends a lot of money on propaganda to spread lies about Ukraine about the full-scale Russian invasion.
Rabbi Moshe Asman in his office in the Brodsky Synagogue
Russian rockets at the memorial were an impetus
At the beginning of March 2022, Russian rockets also hit the Babyn Yar memorial in Kiev. Their target is probably the neighboring television tower, but the shock is great. According to estimates, the German occupiers murdered at least 100,000 people in this place starting in September 1941, including more than 33,000 Jewish Ukrainians.
When the Russian missiles hit Babyn Yar, Moshe Asman was in Anatevka, a place for Jewish internally displaced people from Donbass that he founded almost ten years ago. Anatevka is named after the shtetl in Sholem Alekheim's novel Tevye the Milkman.
The Brodsky Synagogue in Kyiv
Video message to Russian people goes viral
“The Russian missiles were the final straw that broke the camel's back,” he says. “We were under fire day and night. I took a Torah scroll and addressed the Russian people in Russian.”
His assistant Jascha films and posts the video on YouTube: “I can no longer remain silent and appeal to Russians, Russian Jews, the Russian people, remember: anyone who is indifferent and agrees in silence or not in silence becomes an accomplice,” says the rabbi in the video. He was not afraid of dying, but in his worst dreams he never thought that he could die from Russian shells, “where I was born, where I went to school, where I have many friends who are silent and practically no one has called or asked “.
The video is going viral, says Moshe Asman, stroking his beard. “After that, I became famous all over the world and more known in Ukraine. I realized that I had a responsibility to spread the truth.”
State anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union
Born in Leningrad in 1966, he wants to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel. He was denied this for a long time and because of his activities the communist party newspaper Pravda called him an “enemy of Soviet power.” Soviet anti-Semitism was state-based.
There was also strong state anti-Semitism in Ukraine – Soviet anti-Semitism. “I can compare then and now and think that there is much less anti-Semitism in Ukraine now. I'm not saying zero, but it is marginal.”
“When I hear German, I shudder”
There are far more anti-Semitic incidents in Europe or Russia. He has many friends in Germany, says Mosche Asman. “But when I hear German, I shudder. So many years have passed and I talk to normal people in Germany, but when I hear German, I feel the same way.”
In 1987 Moshe Asman was allowed to leave the Soviet Union. In Israel he becomes a rabbi and volunteers for the army. In 1995 he went to Kiev, where he filled the Brodsky Synagogue with religious life again. It was a puppet theater during Soviet times.
Rabbi's son killed in Donbass
Since the major Russian attack, he has become quite well known and travels a lot – including at the front. He recently had to bury his son Anton. He was killed as a soldier near Pokrovsk in Donbass. “It's scary when war affects you personally,” he says.
Even before his son died, he perceived the deaths of innocent people as his own. “Both the Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting and the Israeli soldiers. I take that to heart. When one person dies, the whole world dies.”
