That Ukrainian connection is significant. In other words, memories of the Holocaust and of the country’s founding were yet fresh for many, including my mother, who had grown up in Ukraine and immigrated to Israel with our entire family shortly before her fortieth birthday in 1991. So many of the political leaders then had also been leaders in the wars around the country’s founding-like Itzhak Rabin, then in his second term as Prime Minister. Somehow, no one in this group was shocked to hear this. In the momentary somber still following the lecture, a classmate piped up to say, “my grandfather, may his memory be a blessing, was on Schindler’s list.” The rest of us merely nodded. But on the morning in question, the focus was on history, not current events. This was, after all, just a few years after the Gulf War, so memories of the SCUD missile attacks on the country were fresh. It was in seventh grade that Schindler’s list came up in history class in my Israeli middle school-a low-ceilinged first-floor classroom in a nondescript brick rectangular building, located an easy few minutes’ walk from the school’s bomb shelter where we sometimes had practice drills, and other times simply held PE class.
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