A Ukrainian Forest in Israel and a School Drawing in Kyiv: Who Will Preserve Our Shared History?
By Pavel Shveyko — NAnews | Nikk.Agency Israel News
Somewhere in Israel's Negev desert, there is a grove of trees dedicated to Ukraine. Thousands of kilometers away, Ukrainian schoolchildren are being asked to draw the history of relations between Ukrainians and Jews.
At first, these two projects have almost nothing in common. One involves trees planted over a decade ago. The other invites teenagers to explore a past they may know only from textbooks, family conversations or neglected buildings in their hometowns.
Yet I see an important connection between them. Both projects are attempts to preserve a relationship that is often overshadowed by wars, political disputes and competing interpretations of history.
And both raise a difficult question: who will remember this history when the people who experienced it are no longer here?
I write about these subjects for NAnews | Nikk.Agency Israel News. Born and raised in Ukraine, I now live in Israel, and this connection between two countries is a recurring theme in my reporting. My other publications are available on my author page at NAnews.
A piece of Ukraine growing in the Israeli desert
In October 2026, I investigated the history of a place that even many Israelis may not know exists.
Near Kibbutz Dorot, in the Sha'ar HaNegev region, part of a larger forest carries the name of Ukraine.
The occasion for my investigation was a video recorded by Igal Yasinov, the Kharkiv-born former Knesset member and CEO of JNF-KKL Eurasia. On August 23, 2026, he addressed Ukrainians from this forest ahead of Ukraine's Independence Day.
Instead of simply reporting his congratulations, I wanted to understand how the forest appeared and what had happened to it over the years.
The history was more complicated than the anniversary message suggested.
The first stage dates back to April 2014, when the Odessa Grove began taking shape in the northern Negev. Later, the project developed into a wider Ukrainian memorial initiative involving the Jewish National Fund, Ukrainian diplomats and representatives of the Ukrainian community in Israel.
In December 2015, the official plans referred to an area of approximately 1,200 dunams, equivalent to 120 hectares.
In April 2016, Ukraine's ambassador to Israel participated in planting an olive tree associated with President Petro Poroshenko's visit. In 2018, a memorial stele was unveiled at the Ukrainian section of Dorot Forest.
One detail particularly interested me while checking the archival documents. Different sources described the dates and circumstances of the olive tree's relocation differently.
Rather than invent a neat explanation, I kept those discrepancies visible in the investigation.
Historical memory deserves the same standards of verification as political reporting.
The forest has another important dimension. Dorot is located in a region that has experienced rocket attacks and fires caused by incendiary devices from Gaza.
The wider forest area has suffered such fires, although I could not independently establish that the Ukrainian memorial grove itself had sustained a direct rocket strike.
That distinction matters.
An emotionally powerful story does not become more truthful when journalists exaggerate its details.
For me, the forest represents something more interesting than a symbolic diplomatic gesture. Its history was shaped by immigrants, public organizations, Israeli institutions and people who continued to feel connected to their Ukrainian hometowns.
Their memories became part of the Israeli landscape.
What Ukrainian children are discovering about Jewish history
Another investigation took me in a completely different direction.
The competition is organized through Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, an organization supporting research, educational projects and public understanding of Ukrainian-Jewish relations.
Its title is particularly meaningful: Our Stories Are Incomplete Without Each Other.
Participants from grades 8–11 are invited to explore this history through visual art. The 2026 submission deadline is December 1.
What attracted my attention was not the prize money or the formal competition rules, although those details also deserve careful reporting.
It was the intellectual task facing the students.
How does a teenager illustrate a history that includes religious traditions, neighborhood life, literature, antisemitism, cooperation, persecution and the Holocaust?
An old synagogue might become the starting point. So might a Jewish cemetery, a family photograph or a street where Jewish merchants once kept their shops.
The previous competition offered revealing examples.
Their drawings approached the same history from different perspectives.
I find that valuable because the shared Jewish and Ukrainian past cannot be reduced to a simple celebration of coexistence.
It includes terrible violence and painful questions. It also includes centuries of cultural interaction, common neighborhoods, economic life and creative achievement.
A drawing may not resolve those contradictions. But researching its subject can help a young person discover that the history of their hometown is far more complicated than they imagined.
The connection between a tree and a drawing
The comparison between these projects is not merely poetic.
Consider what happened in Israel.
People who remembered Ukraine planted trees in a place they had made their new home. The Ukrainian name was preserved through an actual landscape, not just an inscription in a commemorative brochure.
Now consider the Ukrainian school competition.
Young people who may have no direct connection to Jewish family history are being encouraged to investigate the Jewish communities that once lived alongside their grandparents and great-grandparents.
In one country, memory is carried across borders by immigrants.
In the other, it is rediscovered by a new generation living among the physical traces of those who departed or were murdered.
These processes can complement each other.
A Ukrainian student studying the history of Jewish Odesa may discover the biographies of people who later helped shape Zionism and Israel.
An Israeli whose family came from Odesa may encounter a Ukrainian cultural project and recognize a place associated with family memories.
Neither experience requires the two societies to agree on every political issue.
Journalism has a role in this conversation
At NAnews — Nikk.Agency Israel News, we work with an audience connected to Israel, Ukraine and their shared historical and cultural experiences.
I believe this work requires more than publishing official statements or repeating press releases.
When I investigated the Ukraine Forest, I compared documents from different years, examined the biographies of those involved and separated verified facts from symbolic claims.
When I examined the school competition, I looked beyond the announcement to the rules, the participants and the historical questions that young people are being encouraged to ask.
Both stories deserve attention precisely because they might otherwise disappear from the daily news cycle.
