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As Ukraine reaches almost a week since the Russian invasion began, a video has gone viral depicting what is said to be a group of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust seeking safety in a bomb shelter in Ukraine.
The video, which was tweeted by retired U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, former director for European affairs of the U.S. National Security Council, could not be independently verified by Newsweek.
"Holocaust survivors in a bomb-shelter in Ukraine, cursing Putin and asking for peace," said the tweet accompanying the video which has now been viewed almost 1 million times.
The video, which is not spoken in English, made its way to Reddit's "interestingasf**k" forum accompanied by English translations of the individuals' pleas.
"Putin! Take away your army! Get out from Ukraine," the first woman said according to the Reddit translation.
All three of the people who speak in the video share that they were born in the late 1930s and early 1940s and have family members who died during Babyn Yar, according to the subtitles.
Earlier this week, a Russian strike hit the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv. Between 1941 and 1943, the Nazis killed between 70,000 and 100,000 people at Babyn Yar, according to the center.
which is now a Holocaust memorial in Ukraine at the site where tens of thousands of Jews were killed by the Nazis in a two-day massacre in 1941 during World War II
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who is Jewish, tweeted about the incident on Tuesday.
"To the world: what is the point of saying <<never again>> for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating... ."
Earlier, Newsweek reported that Putin has justified his invasion of Ukraine by claiming his goal was to "denazify" the country.
The group of people featured in the video is heard saying, which is translated to, "We want peace" multiple times throughout the clip.
The first woman to speak, who is identified as Romanova Valentyna Yosypivna, said she was born in Ukraine in 1941 and "faced the war and was under bomb attack in Kyiv." Now, she said, Ukraine is under attack again.
The people who are said to be gathered in a bomb shelter, are seated along a long corridor with the Ukrainian flag on one side and the Israeli flag on the other.
A man identified as Oleg Yakovych also shared his story saying he was born in Kyiv in 1940 and now is "hiding in a bomb shelter."
The last person to speak is a woman identified as Lukash Tamara Oleksiivna, born in 1939, who says she is a "native Kyiv resident."
"Today I am also in Kyiv and this year it's a horror," the subtitles read.
"Putin, I wish you to die. Leave us, leave us bas**rd," she continued. "We don't want to see you! We don't want to hear you! We want peace."
"We want peace," the group repeated together.
Newsweek reached out to Harper Collins, the publisher of Alexander Vindman's book, for comment.
