Former Soviet Union

Former Prisoners of Zion, aliyah activists, discuss plans for new Soviet Jewry heritage center

Heritage Ministry Director-General Itay Grank presented the ministry’s vision for the center, which would introduce younger generations to the history of Soviet Jewry.

|ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF
Alex Silnitsky addresses a gathering of former Prisoners of Zion and aliyah activists at the Heritage Ministry in Jerusalem on October 5.
Israel’s election campaign is gathering pace, with the country’s political parties competing over the questions of security, leadership and the direction Israel takes after three years of war.

Israel picks between 'secular democracy or theocracy' in election, chess master Garry Kasparov says

"Just as Abraham Lincoln observed that the government could not persist 'half slave and half free,' Israel cannot go on half theocratic and half secular," Kasparov, whose father was Jewish, said.

|ByESTHER DAVIS
FROM LEFT: Vojtech Vodochodský, Stanislav Majer, and Tatiana Pauhofová in ‘Waves.’

‘Waves’ captures thrill and tragedy of resistance at Prague radio station in ’68 - review

Much of Waves is about the exhilaration of resisting, and how exciting it can be to give people the knowledge they need, which is being kept from them, to make their own decisions.

|ByHANNAH BROWN
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy takes part in a commemoration ceremony for the victims of Babyn Yar (Babiy Yar), one of the biggest single massacres of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv Ukraine September 29, 2022.

85 years later: Babyn Yar and the fight against deliberate erasure - opinion

On September 29 and 30, 1941, German forces, aided by local collaborators, murdered 33,771 Jews at Babyn Yar. In just two days, the lives of children, parents, and grandparents were cut short.

|ByREVITAL YAKIN KRAKOVSKY

Olim from former Soviet Union harmed by systemic failures despite high retention rate

Alex Reif: "It is a national waste that Israel is losing immigrants who wish to integrate due to basic failures in absorption."

AUGUST 10, 2025ByJOANIE MARGULIES
Ukrainian refugees are seen arriving in Israel as part of Operation Israeli Guarantee, on March 6, 2022.

At least 50 feared dead as Soviet-era passenger plane crashes in Russia's far east

The burning fuselage of the plane, which was from the Soviet era and was nearly 50 years old, was spotted on the ground by a helicopter, and rescue crews were rushing to the scene.

JULY 24, 2025ByREUTERS
(illustrative) A Russian An-24 airplane.

'The Illegals': Soviet infiltration, observation, and subversion into the West - review

Shortly after the 1917 October Revolution, Meir Abramovich Trilisser, the forerunner of the KGB, introduced the “illegals” as a weapon into an anti-Communist West

JULY 19, 2025ByCOLIN SHINDLER
ELENA VAVILOVA, photographed in the 1980s, was a colonel in the KGB First Chief Directorate Foreign Intelligence Service until 2010.

Novel set in a war-torn Ukraine wins Sami Rohr prize for Jewish literature

Sasha Vasilyuk's novel is the second book by an immigrant from the former Soviet Union to win the 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

MAY 21, 2025ByANDREW SILOW-CARROLL/JTA
Books (illustrative)

A memoir of courage and love: British-Israeli pioneer living on the Gaza border - review

Interviews with released hostages and families of victims illustrate how many of them were pioneers who made the Western Negev bloom.

MAY 8, 2025ByWENDY BLUMFIELD
A barbed wire fence is seen on Zikim beach, in southern Israel near the border with Northern Gaza Strip, on April 5, 2016

The growing need for Holocaust education, as Trump's actions won't be enough - opinion

A 2020 Claims Conference survey found that 63% of US millennials and Gen Z did not know that six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

MAY 4, 2025ByGREGORY LYAKHOV
PROTESTERS CALL for the release of Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil in New York City, last month. On campuses like Columbia and in all levels of education, better Holocaust education is needed, says the writer.

Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson must allow access to information on Wallenberg case - opinion

After eight decades, the central questions in the Wallenberg case remain unanswered: What exactly happened to him after his trail broke off in Moscow in the spring of 1947?

APRIL 22, 2025ByMARIE VON DARDEL-DUPUY , LOUISE VON DARDEL
RAOUL WALLENBERG’S parents, Maj and Fredrik von Dardel, are pictured with Wallenberg’s brother, Guy von Dardel (left), the father of the two authors of this open letter, in a rare private moment during the 1970s.

Alleged KGB report detailing encounter between Soviet soldiers ans a UFO resurfaces

Experts refute the authenticity of a report claiming extraterrestrial beings 'petrified' 23 soldiers in Ukraine.

APRIL 16, 2025ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF
Column of the Red army infantry. Reenactment of the winter defensive battles of the Red Army in WWII. Image: Maria Moskvitsova.

Wars on two fronts: Russian-speaking olim on making aliyah during wartime - opinion

I am privileged to have gotten to know hundreds of Russian-speaking olim in their 20s and 30s through my work over the past 15 years.

APRIL 5, 2025ByLINDA PARDES FRIEDBURG
NEW RUSSIAN-SPEAKING olim celebrate Independence Day in the Jerusalem Hills this past year.

The enigma of Nikita Khrushchev: Unravelling the Soviet leader's views on Israel, Zionism

The story of the Soviet leader’s time in power, his policies against Jews, and his relationship with Israel and Zionism

MARCH 15, 2025ByALEX WINSTON
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV (R) and Leonid Brezhnev wave from Lenin’s Tomb in Moscow after announcing that Khrushchev was resigning as first secretary of the Communist Party and Brezhnev was taking over the role, 1964.