About a hundred people gathered in Kiev's central synagogue on Thursday to pay their respects to Matityahu Anton Samborsky, the son of Ukraine's chief rabbi, who was killed fighting Russian forces.
Relatives carried bouquets of flowers, caressed the coffin and shook the hand of the deceased's father, Chief Rabbi Moshe Azman, who was holding back tears, an AFP journalist noted. “I want God to avenge him and the other innocent people, soldiers and civilians, who are dying in this war,” said Moshe Azman.
“He was killed by the Russian world who came here saying they wanted to 'denazify' Ukraine,” he added, referring to one of the arguments put forward by the Kremlin to justify its invasion.
Read also:
The war in Ukraine: Why Ukrainians' use of long-range missiles could tip the conflict
Before the start of the war in February 2022, Ukraine had about 300,000 Jews, 50,000 of them in the capital, according to Rabbi Azman. Matityahu Samborsky, adopted by the rabbi's family as a child, had gone to fight with the Russian forces as a volunteer.
Read also:
War in Ukraine: Russians launch first counteroffensive against Ukrainian soldiers at Kursk
“Ukraine and Israel share, in a certain way, the same destiny, fighting for the right to be a state, to have the right to choose, to be free,” assured, for his part, the Ukrainian ambassador to Israel, Michael Brodsky. “It's a tragedy for the entire Jewish community,” he commented.