It is mid-morning at the Jewish Centre in Odesa, southern Ukraine. Bright sun wafts through the windows of a small office cramped by a large wooden desk and shelves packed with books on Jewish life. An administrative worker sits behind her computer in one corner. Opposite her is Roman Shvartsman, an 89-year-old survivor of the Bershad ghetto.
He is sobbing. We have only just begun to speak and he is recalling the murder of his brother by Nazis – shot and killed as a boy after falling into a river.
Before he can speak any longer the interview is abruptly stopped. A warning message blares from the building’s loudspeakers. Air raid sirens begin wailing from the streets.
The quiet woman typing away in the corner hastily asks that we help Roman from his seat and away from the windows.
Within moments a large thud echoes outside. Then another. Russia is bombing.
We later learn that multiple drone attacks took place on the nearby port. Two passenger trains were attacked, with a driver killed.
Nazi torment: Jews from Odesa being marched out of the city during the Second World War (Image: getty)[Missing Credit]
For Roman, the sirens and devastation bring back the trauma of childhood.
“Back then, Hitler wanted to kill me because I was Jewish. Now, Putin wants to kill me because I am Ukrainian,” he says.
When war broke out in 2022, Odesa was home to 30,000 Jews. The figure is thought to be much lower today.
In June 1941, at the time of Nazi Germany’s invasion, Ukraine hosted Europe’s largest Jewish population. It is estimated that about 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were killed, by Nazis as well as by collaborators, during the Holocaust.
“There are more than 1,000 people living in Ukraine who survived the Nazi ghettos and concentration camps,” Shvartsman says. “We are old and want to die a natural death, not be killed by modern-day fascists.
“Of course it would be really great today as an old person to enjoy my old age with my family; go to the beach and have a peaceful time with my family. But because of this terrorist and Mafia guy Putin, I cannot do this. This little uneducated, miserable man, Putin, made a decision to destroy the whole nation of Ukrainians. Putin is the Hitler of today.
“Russia is the ultimate tumour of the world. It is a terrorist state. They are just attacking and killing and it is the way they are.”
Last year he was honoured to be addressing the Germany parliament on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
He praises the Germans for coming to understand their historic mistake. He is less pleased by Europe as a whole.
“We have been standing for four and a half years,” he says, huddled in a corridor for safety from the ongoing drone attack by Russians as we speak.
“You should help us more. We want to kick them out; we want to stop them. If you are reading this, I am asking you to not forget us. The Jews are always forgotten by the world. I am asking you not to forget me.”
He adds that he is “very grateful” to Britain, still. “To the British Jewish people: thank you. I see your King meets with the president many times and it means a lot. From the bottom of my heart, I am grateful.”
The reality of the threat came shuddering home one year into the war.
Ukrainian rescuers work in the courtyard of a damaged building at the site of a Russian air attack in Odesa on August 9, 2026 (Photo by Oleksandr GIMANOV / AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images
“Putin almost managed to kill me,” Shvartsman explains through a translator.
A Russian drone attack damaged his block of flats in 2023. The barrage devastated a nearby school and church and destroyed a building only 200 metres from his own.
“I live on the tenth floor and walk with a stick. When there are drones flying, you still might have time to escape. But when these alerts are ballistic missiles, then you should be really fast. You should be on time, which I cannot be.
“I was walking with the sticks to hide in my basement, because there is no shelter in his house and nearby. When the drone hit there was a lot of damage and my feet were sinking in broken glass.
“My door was so damaged that I had to call a neighbour to help him enter. And when they opened the door, absolutely everything was on the floor, like flower pots, furniture. Everything was broken. Nothing stayed the same. Nothing survived. My whole life was smashed.”
Shvartsman was born in the small town of Bershad, now Vinnytsia Oblast, in western Ukraine. He grew up in a poor Jewish family: nine children living with his parents in a tiny two-room house. His father was mobilised into the Red Army shortly after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, while his mother was asked to do all she could to raise the family.
Rumours of the extermination of Jews had reached the family by the time German and Romanian forces approached Bershad. Shvartsman’s mother attempted to evacuate the family. They spent two weeks fleeing by horse-drawn wagon, but German forces captured the area, surrounding it with barbed wire fencing and shooting anyone who attempted to escape.
Hunger, disease, cold, violence and forced labour were the norm.
As a boy of four-years-old he was forced to work on a construction site and to clean the streets.
His brother, Yosef, was made to fix a bridge above a river in 1942. But he struggled and fell into the freezing river below. His mother received information that he had been shot by the captors who accused of him trying to flee. He was 14.
“We would have to beg and hope for scraps left under the table like dogs. It was so cruel,” Shwartsman says, sitting at the desk of the Jewish centre he has been integral in supporting.
His voice breaks as he recalls the brutal hunger of 80 years ago, until soon he is sobbing heavily.
“I can remember things so clearly. It has not gone away. It was a good day if scraps were left for us to eat. We were kids, we did not deserve to experience this. I was so thin my ribs would stick out.
“When they were cooking meat and washing the meat, we knew we might get some that was left. I can never forgotten the taste of that washed meat.”
After liberation, the USSR discriminated against Jews. He was unable to talk publicly about the horrors he endured during the Holocaust.
Today he is chairman of the Odesa Regional Association of Jews. It was set up as soon as Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union – 35 years ago this week.
And even though he is living through war once more, Shvartsman cannot overstate his relief to be freely and openly Jewish.
“Modern Ukraine, and the way we can live today, it is paradise compared to what we had to live through before. The president of Ukraine is a Jew. I am so proud of that. Jews have always been united. This is a special feature of Jewish people – we protect each other, we go to synagogue, we share food, we look out for people in need. It is a special trait. And it has helped a great deal in these times.”
There have been more air raid sirens during our three hours talking. It feels endless. As he faces the opening and closing chapters of his life under war in Europe, have we learnt anything?
“It is not possible to learn a lesson if you do not experience it. Most people are either uneducated, like the American president, or they are young and look at this superficially. You have to be in it to face it. I really dream of retribution over Russians so that finally we can learn.”
Despite it all Shvartsman holds out some hope.
“I am 90 years old in two months. I want to see the war is over by then. My grandson is a doctor. He has just got married. All I dream is that I live long enough to hold my grandson.”
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