They came seeking freedom: Russian-speaking Jews bore the brunt of Bondi attack

The parents of 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest of the 15 people killed during Sunday’s terror attack at a Hanukkah party at Bondi Beach, hadn’t planned to address the large crowd that gathered for a heart-rending vigil at the Bondi Beach Pavilion days after the attack.

But as her father, Michael, got up to speak in his Ukrainian accent on Wednesday, he shared a poignant detail that revealed how he saw his family’s place in the country. (The family is withholding their last name for privacy.)

“I named her Matilda because she was our firstborn in Australia,” he said, sobbing. “I thought that Matilda was the most Australian name that could ever exist.”

“So just remember – remember her name,” he added, before breaking down and turning to his family.

It was a striking moment that shone a brief spotlight on the attitudes of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants within Australia’s larger Jewish community — a community that moved over the course of decades to the other side of the world to start new lives in a country known for its tolerance and liberal values.

“Most of the people here immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and later in the 1990s, to escape what was happening there,” explained Anna Maylis, the head of Kangarusski, an organization for Russian-speaking immigrants run by the Zionist Federation of Australia. “Our community loves Australia, and feels very much part of the country, but we don’t see a bright future here at the moment.”

Immigrants from the former Soviet Union make up a sizable portion of Australia’s 120,000-strong Jewish community. There are about 5,000 FSU immigrants living in Sydney, and a bit more than that in Melbourne, Maylis said. If you include the Australian-born children of these immigrants, as much as a quarter of the country’s Jews have Russian origins, she added.

At the Bondi Beach Hanukkah party that became the site of the world’s deadliest attack on Jews outside Israel in years, more than half of the estimated thousand attendees came from the Russian community, and many of those killed or injured were from those families, Maylis noted.

“It wasn’t a Russian event per se, but the Chabad House that hosted the event has a very strong Russian connection,” Maylis said. “Rabbi Eli Schlanger [the Chabad rabbi killed at the attack] wasn’t Russian himself, but he did a lot with our community and was very much a part of it.”

Schlanger’s father-in-law, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, had served for decades as the director of Bondi’s branch of Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe (FREE), an organization serving FSU communities around the world, founded by Chabad. Among his duties in this role has been presiding over circumcisions for adults who were forbidden from having them in the USSR.

Maylis said most members of Australia’s Russian community grew up without any religious upbringing in the USSR, but they continue to maintain a strong sense of Jewish identity and connection with Israel. That made Chabad, which welcomed them warmly to Jewish events without demands of religious commitment, a strong presence in their lives, particularly after October 7.

???? The Sydney attack: Rabbi Eli Schlanger helps a Jewish man put on tefillin. On the right stands Matilda, a 10-year-old girl dressed in yellow.

Shortly afterward, Rabbi Schlanger and Matilda were killed in the attack.

The video was shared by Matilda’s father. pic.twitter.com/dQXJd7x1SB

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Kangarusski, Maylis’s organization, was founded in 2012 to unite the Russian community through Jewish and Zionist values, organizing summer camps, holiday events, and communal bar mitzvahs. Since October 7, its efforts have been focused on providing support to members amidst soaring antisemitism in Australia, as well as running educational programs and advocacy projects.

The community is close-knit, and virtually everyone is connected to someone who was killed or injured in Sunday’s attack, Maylis said. She says she personally knew at least seven of the victims, including Matilda and her family.

“Her parents are beautiful people, very involved in the community,” she said, noting that she had spent the previous day with the family, caring for Matilda’s younger sister. “They are the types of people that found strength, despite their loss, to go pay a visit to Rabbi Schlanger’s family and pay condolences, even with all their pain and sorrow.”

It’s a hard time for the community, as members attend funerals and pay condolence calls to old friends and colleagues, Maylis said.

On Thursday, the oldest victim of Sunday’s attack, 87-year-old Holocaust survivor and Ukrainian immigrant Alex Kleytman was laid to rest. His wife has said Kleytman was killed while shielding her from the bullets with his own body.

A day earlier, funerals were held for Boris and Sofia Gurman, a Russian-Jewish couple who were killed trying to fight off the terrorists before the shooting spree began. Dashcam footage appeared to show the pair confronting the father and son gunmen after the attackers parked their car with an Islamic State flag draped across the windshield.

Other funerals will be held in the coming days, and many victims remain hospitalized. Kangarusski is working intensely to offer emotional support to community members, Maylis said, and the organization is distributing food baskets to about 70 families following the attack.

“There’s a lot to do right now,” Maylis said. “Our community needs us.”