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KYIV — On April 5, the forty first day of Russia’s invasion, one in all Ukraine’s richest males stepped in entrance of a digital camera.
Standing in a now-empty playground, the person, wearing a blue jacket and grey sweatshirt, choked again tears as he delivered his message.
“Feldman Ecopark now not exists,” stated the zoo’s eponymous founder, Kharkiv’s Oleksandr Feldman.
The Jewish businessman and parliamentarian based the park in 2011 as a petting zoo for teenagers. The following 12 months, he started to import extra unique creatures like Amur Tigers and chimpanzees. Feldman continued to broaden his zoo, bringing in over 300 completely different species and 5,000 animals.
The park — and all its festivals and actions — have been at all times solely freed from cost. It maintained a specific orientation towards kids, internet hosting animal remedy applications, a kids’s theater and nature colleges for teenagers.
Then warfare got here to Kharkiv.
Tapirs being evacuated from Kharkiv’s Feldman Ecopark at the back of a volunteer’s van, 2022 (courtesy)
On February 24, the primary day of the invasion, the zoo’s social media staff posted photos of injury to the park it stated have been attributable to 5 Russian shells. Feldman Ecopark additionally stated that the bombardment killed a few of its animals.
Although closed to the general public, the zoo tried to maintain caring for its creatures, but it surely rapidly grew to become untenable. Animals escaped broken enclosures. Two workers have been killed by mortar fireplace on March 8. The following week, one other worker, Sergiy Ivanov, was killed.
Stephen Colbert light-heartedly highlighted the efforts of volunteers to evacuate the animals, together with a person who drove ten kangaroos and wallabies to security in his van.
However with the park coming underneath repeated shelling, drastic measures needed to be taken. Tigers, lions and bears may escape if their enclosures have been hit. Feldman stated they might attempt to discover momentary shelter for the big predators if he may.
These kangaroos have been evacuated from Feldman Ecopark in #Kharkiv. Their enclosures have been repeatedly shelled by #Russian Armed Forces. Now kangaroos are protected ????????#StopRussianAggression#closeUAskyNOW#StandWithUkraine️ pic.twitter.com/gdNfzN2bui
— MFA of Ukraine ???????? (@MFA_Ukraine) March 26, 2022
“Failing that, the one possibility left to us is to place the predators to sleep,” he continued within the Fb video. “It’s unimaginably painful to speak about this, however the primary precedence now’s the lives of individuals.”
His message touched different animal lovers in Ukraine and past. Hours after his announcement, Feldman issued an replace that he had discovered properties for 2 lions, a jaguar and a panther. 5 extra lions have been evacuated the following day. In the end, although, of the round 5,000 animals within the zoo earlier than the warfare, 150 died within the shelling or have been put down.
A llama at Kharkiv’s Feldman Ecopark steps round a Russian shell in the course of the early phases of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (courtesy)
“Kharkiv is my residence and it’s being destroyed proper in entrance of my eyes,” Feldman advised The Instances of Israel on Tuesday, talking in his workplace in central Kyiv.
The 62-year-old’s second-floor workplace has mezuzot hanging on each doorpost, and Jewish artwork depicting Hasidim and different shtetl scenes cowl the partitions.
“I used to be born there, I grew up there, I served within the military there, I went to school there, I made cash there, so my complete life is that this metropolis,” he stated.
Situated solely 19 miles (30 kilometers) from the Russian border, Ukraine’s second-largest metropolis was an attractive goal for Moscow, which believed that its principally Russian-speaking inhabitants would welcome its troops as liberators from nationalist Ukrainians. Although Russian forces briefly reached town’s middle, by mid-Might they’d been pushed again towards the border.
Nonetheless, town continues to undergo from shelling, and destruction is widespread in civilian areas.
Kharkiv businessman and politician Oleksandr Feldman declares the closing of the Feldman Ecopark, April 5, 2022 (screenshot)
Sheltering folks
After serving within the Pink Military, Feldman began his skilled profession as a driver. He moved up via quite a lot of positions, and based Concern AVEC, an actual property administration firm, in 1994. Amongst different properties, his firm owns Kharkiv’s large Barabashova Market, one of many largest on the planet.
Feldman, who now wears a knit yarmulke, grew up so faraway from Jewish follow that he was not circumcised till the age of 42. His father, 72 on the time, and son, 20, endured the ritual together with him.
The daddy of two is energetic in interfaith organizations and has headed the Ukrainian Jewish Committee since 2008.
“Oleksandr Feldman is a real associate within the rebuilding of the Kharkiv Jewish neighborhood and a real instance of a proud Jew,” remarked Kharkiv rabbi Moshe Moskowitz to The Instances of Israel.
Kharkiv Rabbi Moshe Moskowitz in his workplace, July 29, 2022 (Lazar Berman/The Instances of Israel)
However Feldman noticed the initiatives he spearheaded within the metropolis as a philanthropist and, for the final 20 years as a parliamentarian, worn out in days within the Russian barrage.
“What can I say when my residence and my workplace are destroyed, my enterprise is destroyed?” Feldman stated. “Even my most proud mission, the ecopark that I’ve spent 15 years constructing, is completely destroyed.”
Barabashova was hit by Grad rockets on March 17, and once more on Might 20. Fires gutted the markets, and by late June solely 20 p.c of the stalls had reopened.
His Kharkiv residence was struck too. “If I had gone to sleep the place I often fall asleep in my mattress, I might not be right here now,” he stated. Regardless of the shut name, Feldman doesn’t suppose he’s being personally focused.
Illustrative: A Joint Distribution Committee employee arms meals and PPE to a Jewish consumer in Kharkiv, Ukraine (courtesy JDC).
Feldman has used the zoo and different websites, together with Kharkiv’s Choral Synagogue, as hubs for the distribution of humanitarian provides. He stated his initiatives have offered over 540,000 meals packages and 30,000 sizzling meals in the course of the warfare.
“We purchased groceries for folks, we cooked them meals,” he stated.
The synagogue fed 1000’s of individuals every single day on the peak of the Russian assault. “We might by no means ask in the event that they have been Jewish,” stated Feldman. “We have been simply sheltering folks.”
Not a single particular person from the synagogue ran away.
He additionally organized buses from the synagogue to shuttle Kharkivites in another country. As of final week, buses have been nonetheless leaving the synagogue to hold residents to the West.
The Jewish neighborhood was distinctive in its dedication to serve town, he stated. “The guards on the ecopark ran away in someday. The safety of my enterprise ran away in someday. However not a single particular person from the synagogue ran away.”
In 2014, Feldman, who has organized a collection of worldwide conferences in Kyiv on combatting antisemitism, was threatened in Kyiv by uniformed males who hurled antisemitic insults at him. However he doesn’t see antisemitism as a big drawback in Ukraine.
“Identify me one nation wherein there is no such thing as a antisemitism,” he stated.
Hip-hop star Shyne, proper, and Oleksandr Feldman, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and president of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Courtesy)
“On the federal government stage there’s no antisemitism in Ukraine. The president is Jewish, the prime minister was Jewish, a number of the parliament is Jewish. In fact there’s some antisemitism right here and there.”
“I’m the deputy from a working-class neighborhood,” Feldman continued. “The general public who vote for me will not be Jewish.”
He additionally pointed to the 2021 regulation banning antisemitism in Ukraine.
‘Catastrophically small’ assist from Israel
Feldman, who was in Israel days earlier than the warfare, has not been thrilled with the nation’s stance vis-à-vis the warfare in Ukraine.
Israel has sought to keep up open channels with each Kyiv and Moscow in the course of the battle. Jerusalem has not joined Western sanctions in opposition to Russia, nor has it been keen to supply even defensive weaponry to Ukraine. It has despatched vital humanitarian assist, together with a discipline hospital close to Lviv.
Israel ships protecting tools to Ukraine’s emergency companies, July 14, 2022 (Protection Ministry)
However Feldman thinks that the help just isn’t almost sufficient.
“I’ve a robust opinion as a result of I’m Jewish,” he stated. “I want there was extra carried out for Ukraine on the Israeli aspect. I believe that what has been carried out is catastrophically small. I want it was a lot a lot greater.”
In 2014, when Russia took over Crimea and components of japanese Ukraine, Feldman flew to Israel with one other Ukrainian Jewish chief to enlist the nation’s help for Kyiv. When then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to fulfill with them, Feldman publicly expressed disappointment at Israel’s failure to take a agency stance alongside Ukraine.
No Israeli officers have reached out to Feldman to debate the warfare, he lamented. “It’s very unusual that they haven’t been involved, as a result of I’ve been within the Ukraine-Israel working group for a few years.”
Although they’re each outstanding Jewish politicians, Feldman just isn’t shut with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We had no relationship earlier than he grew to become president,” Feldman defined. “He was an amazing artist and he would regularly go to our occasion’s headquarters. My father and mom cherished him loads.”
On this picture offered by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Workplace, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, listens to a serviceman report near the frontline in Donetsk area, Ukraine, June 5, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Workplace through AP)
Feldman joined the Opposition Platform — For Life occasion in 2019, now banned in Ukraine for its alleged pro-Russian stance. The occasion initiated impeachment proceedings in opposition to Zelensky in 2021, accusing him of violating freedom of speech within the nation.
“It’s like that was 400 years in the past,” he advised The Instances of Israel. “This warfare is a brand new actuality.”
Feldman stop the faction in mid-March. “What sort of peace can there be if Russia attacked us and is now bombing our cities?” he remarked on a Ukrainian radio station. “She destroyed Kharkiv!”
Now he calls Zelensky a “hero.”
“I’m simply amazed at what he’s carried out. He had a possibility to run away, however he didn’t, he stayed, and he held his floor. Now he’s a hero, however earlier than the warfare I don’t suppose he had sufficient time to develop as a politician as a result of he was lately elected and lately got here into the political scene.”
Feldman continued: “He took duty for the folks and he went forward together with his plan, and that’s why it was efficient.”
Essentially the most inhumane factor
Although he is likely one of the nation’s strongest folks — what some would possibly name an oligarch — Feldman maintains a deep emotional connection to his metropolis and to the nation.
“What can I really feel, when every single day I see that Russians assault civilian objects, they assault colleges, they assault kindergartens, they assault church buildings. It’s probably the most inhumane factor that may occur,” he stated as he ushered me towards the elevator after our dialog in his workplace.
Central Kharkiv, July 27, 2022 (Lazar Berman/The Instances of Israel)
“They’re simply attempting to destroy what they weren’t capable of create themselves in 30 years because the break-up of the Soviet Union.”
Feldman appeared about to specific one other thought, however he paused. The lawmaker all of the sudden grabbed my forearm as his eyes teared up.
He let loose an involuntary sob, turned and rushed again into his workplace.
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