In this piece for The Times of Israel Blog, Patricia Levinson, communications chair of Hadassah International, talks about the memories of the Six-Day War that came to her as she awaited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along with the rest of the world. Looking at her Ukrainian great-grandmother’s portrait, she wonders if she has any relatives she doesn’t know about, any Holocaust survivors, who are still living in Ukraine. She compares the current situation to her experience of living in Israel in 1967 in the weeks leading up to the war, when the population of 2.5 million waited to be attacked by six Arab countries with a combined population of 50 million. During the war, she lived at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and worked as a biochemist. She remembers hearing reports of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s dreams of uniting the Arab lands under his leadership. She remembers how, after Egypt declared war, she watched young and middle-aged men board buses to join the fight to defend their homeland. She remembers seeing tanks heading toward the Sinai. “Today, as the world looks on anxiously, anticipating Russia’s next move on Ukraine,” she says, “I look at the large, stern-faced portrait of my great grandmother – lovingly preserved by her descendants – and wonder what she would make of the current turmoil.
”Patricia Levinson is a member of the HADASSAH WRITERS’ CIRCLE, a program of Hadassah’s Media & Public Relations Office that offers Hadassah’s volunteer leaders, members and professional staff a way to share their thoughts and feelings about Hadassah’s work in the United States and Israel.