Historical event: A monument to the victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine was unveiled for the first time in Israel

Attending the solemn ceremony on 3 December 2025 were members of the Ukrainian government delegation, led by Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Taras Kachka, as well as representatives of the Jerusalem City Council, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Knesset, Ukrainian community members, and ambassadors from various countries.

The monument was produced on behalf of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with the support of the Temerty Foundation, the City of Jerusalem, the Embassy of Ukraine in Israel, the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, and the Ukrainian World Congress.

The monument is installed in the central part of Jerusalem in the Wohl Rose Garden, opposite the Knesset. In terms of location, the Ukrainian memorial is situated in a more prestigious part of the Israeli capital than the Russian monument commemorating the Siege of Leningrad, opened by Putin in January 2020 in a Jerusalem city park.

For the monument to the victims of the Holodomor, Ukrainian Ambassador Yevgen Korniychuk managed to secure a site right next to the Israeli parliament — in the government's "Quarter of the Nation."

The site, located on a wooded hill, offers a magnificent view of Jerusalem. Now, the route of all Ukrainian delegations in Israel will pass through this point.

The monument was designed by Ludmilla Temertey, creator of the first monument to the victims of the Holodomor in Canada (1983), and David Robinson.

The monument is dedicated to the millions of victims of the Holodomor — a famine-genocide committed by the communist Soviet regime against the people of Ukraine in 1932–1933.

The raised hand before a broken millstone symbolizes the overwhelming burden of memory and a deep faith in renewal and healing. In the hand are five stalks of grain, reminiscent of the cruel Kremlin law, according to which storing any amount of the harvest was punishable by death.

Among the participants in the ceremony was Natan Sharansky. A native of Donetsk, he was a "prisoner of Zion", a former minister, and a former head of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Speaking on behalf of Ukrainians were Taras Kachka, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine; Oleksandr Alfiorov, Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance and Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Azman; and Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk. The latter made great efforts for more than two years to implement the project to install the monument, overcoming all difficulties along the way.

Ambassador Korniychuk especially thanked James C. Temerty for his support of the project and expressed hope that the prominent Canadian philanthropist would visit Jerusalem in early 2026.

Knesset member Yuli Edelstein, co-chair of the Israel-Ukraine interparliamentary group, spoke on behalf of the Israeli Knesset. He emphasized the profound significance and symbolism of the Holodomor monument's location in the very center of the district that houses the leading institutions of Israel's independence — the Parliament, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Prime Minister's office.

Lesia Hasydzhak, the director of Ukraine's Holodomor Museum, explained why recognition of the Holodomor by the State of Israel is essential for every Ukrainian. "After all, who, if not a nation against which genocide was also committed, can sympathize with us with particular sensitivity. I believe that the opening of the monument is the first step towards this," she emphasized.

In my opinion, the initiative of the diplomats of the Ukrainian Embassy, who installed stands with information about the Jewish victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine near the monument, was very correct and reasonable. Such visual information helps Israelis to understand more deeply the common tragedies of the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples and to create new bridges of mutual understanding between Ukraine and Israel.

Text and photo: Shimon Briman (Israel).