Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky’s election will see Ukraine led for the first time by a president of Jewish descent, in a landmark for a country with a long history of anti-Semitism.
The 41-year-old actor on Sunday won a landslide victory against Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. His triumph has been hailed as a sign of tolerance in the ex-Soviet country accused by some of having a lax attitude toward neo-Nazi groups.
Ukraine already has a Jewish prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, also 41, and who is to remain in office pending parliamentary elections scheduled for October.
The chief rabbi of Ukraine and Kiev, Moshe Reuvan Azman, called Zelenky’s win “a miracle.”
“This says a lot about the maturity of the Ukrainian people,” he said. “Relations between Ukrainians and Jews have not always been easy.”
“Ukraine is the only country in the world, aside from Israel, where the president and prime minister are Jewish,” Eduard Dolinsky, a Jewish community leader, wrote on Facebook.
Zelensky has said he considers religion to be a private affair and has christened his children in the Orthodox tradition, according to Ukrainian media.
While the election campaign was fierce and saw opponents exchange various insults, Zelensky’s ancestry was not used as a motive for attacks.
This was far from trivial in a country where during the Soviet period, being Jewish was not considered a matter of faith, but one of nationality and marked as such on identity papers.
The first Jewish massacres in what is now Ukraine date back to the 17th century, during an uprising against Polish rule led by Cossack military leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky, when thousands of Jews were killed.
Thousands more were killed during another revolt against the Poles in the 18th century.
Between 1917 and 1921, a period of fierce fighting between Russia’s White and Bolshevik armies and Ukrainian nationalist armies was marked by a wave of pogroms.
Ukraine’s Jews were almost wiped out during the Holocaust, in which some Ukrainians collaborated with Nazi authorities.
In Babi Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev, 34,000 Jews were slaughtered in just two days in one of the worst single massacres of the Holocaust.
However, other Ukrainians risked their lives to help Jews during the Nazi occupation.
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