Prisoner of Zion Sharansky is honored in Kyiv

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy honored Natan Sharansky with the country’s Order of Merit for his work supporting Ukraine and preserving Holocaust memory.

Sharansky, the former Prisoner of Zion and Israeli statesman, received the medal in Kyiv for efforts that include chairing the supervisory board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.

“Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression and Israel’s war against terrorist organizations are different, but we are fighting the same axis of evil,” Sharansky said during his visit.

Born in Donetsk in 1948, Sharansky was imprisoned by the Soviet Union in 1977 for Zionist activism and became an international symbol of the fight for human rights. He was freed in 1986.

The Babyn Yar center works to preserve the memory of the Holocaust massacre in which German troops and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police murdered at least 33,000 Jews outside Kyiv in September 1941.