Molotov Attack in Kryvyi Rih – a Stark Warning for Europe

A lone assailant steps out of the night and hurls a flaming bottle at the synagogue of Kryvyi Rih, the industrial city where President Volodymyr Zelensky was born. The Molotov cocktail smashes, flares, then gutters against newly reinforced glass; the sanctuary is saved, but the message is unmistakable: Jewish life in wartime Ukraine is again under threat. The incident, reported by The Jerusalem Post as the second antisemitic attack in the city within a week, has jolted both the local congregation and observers abroad. m.jpost.com

I feel the jolt in my bones. My late father, Simha Zanzer, first opened his own eyes far from Kryvyi Rih, in Lutsk—Volhynia’s onetime provincial capital. In August 1942 Nazi occupiers and Ukrainian auxiliary police marched more than seventeen thousand Jews from the Lutsk ghetto to the hill of Górka Połonka and shot them into mass pits. Among the victims were my grandparents, my father’s sister and his two small brothers. My father survived only because forced labour had dragged him outside the ghetto that morning. His life became a walking reminder that antisemitism never truly dies; it waits for crisis to revive it.

The present crisis—Russia’s full‑scale invasion—has created precisely the conditions in which old hatreds can flourish. Kremlin propaganda brands Ukraine “Nazi” even while courting Europe’s far‑right parties. A minority of radical Ukrainian nationalists repays the favour by praising wartime collaborators, providing ready‑made images for Moscow’s disinformation mill. Police and National Guard units are tied up at the front; synagogues, schools and cemeteries depend on volunteers and thin budgets for protection. Add the psychic pressure of displacement, trauma and ubiquitous firearms, and you have a powder keg that can ignite with the toss of a single bottle.

Yet Jewish life in Ukraine is also a pillar of the nation’s resilience. Jewish‑owned tech firms in Kyiv and Odesa keep Western supply chains running even under missile fire. Humanitarian networks led by the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine move bandages and generators from Boston, Brussels and Tel Aviv to frontline hospitals faster than any ministry. Cultural centres and memorial projects weave Ukraine into Europe’s fabric of shared memory. Protecting these assets is therefore more than philanthropy; it is state‑building.

What must Kyiv do?
First, establish a national fund for the security of synagogues, schools and cemeteries, modelled on Germany’s and Britain’s programmes.
Second, outlaw the public glorification of Holocaust collaborators and remove their names from streets and monuments.
Third, ensure that every secondary‑school history book tells the full story of the Holocaust by Bullets—including chapters on local complicity and rescue.
Fourth, create a transparent, central database of hate crimes so that prosecutors and citizens can measure reality instead of rumours.
Finally, mark every mass grave on Ukrainian soil—beginning with Górka Połonka in Lutsk—because visible memory is the vaccine against denial.

These steps are not optional. Respect for minorities is a chapter of the acquis communautaire that every candidate country must pass before joining the European Union. The United States, under its Global Antisemitism Review Act, likewise monitors hate trends when allocating aid. How Ukraine deals with the attack in Kryvyi Rih will resonate in Brussels and Washington as loudly as any battlefield communiqué.

Seventy‑three years after my father staggered out of the Lutsk ghetto, I can walk those streets with my own children. A granite plaque now glitters where the Judenrat once pleaded for food rations. Granite alone cannot extinguish a Molotov cocktail. Only law, education and political courage can do that. Ukraine is already fighting for its borders; it must fight with equal resolve for the moral ground beneath its feet. If it succeeds—if it safeguards its Jews, Roma, Tatars and every other minority—it will emerge from the war not only as a military survivor but as a fully European democracy, ready for investment, partnership and peace.

The bottle that shattered against the synagogue wall in Kryvyi Rih could have been thrown at any Jewish door—in Mykolaiv, in Lviv, or in a restored shul on Lutsk’s Bratska Street. For the sake of President Zelensky’s birthplace, for the sake of my father’s murdered family, and for the sake of every Ukrainian child reciting the Shema behind reinforced glass, that next bottle must never be thrown.