During an Independence Day celebration in the town of Rohatyn, on the last day of our group tour through Ukraine, a television reporter asked me what we Israelis thought about the country. Put on the spot, I blurted out platitudes, saying that the country was beautiful and that the people were very nice. I did add that most of the participants on our tour had roots in this very area: that their parents, grandparents, uncles and cousins had lived around here.
Then one of our group leaders, Rabbi Dr. Benjamin Lau, reminded the reporter that over two million Jews throughout the Soviet Union had been murdered in the Holocaust, and that the Ukraine had been left with virtually no Jewish population. He ended with a plea for people everywhere to learn to live together with respect.
