Conductor Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin. State Opera’s concern in solidarity with Ukraine. Photo: Reuters/Annegret Hilse

The celebrated Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim on Sunday delivered an impassioned speech at a solidarity concert in Berlin for Ukraine, in which he recalled how his family had fled the violent pogroms during the early 20th century.

Noting his family origins in Ukraine and Belarus, the 79-year-old Barenboim said that his grandparents had fled the “antisemitic pogroms” carried out by the Black Hundreds — a virulently antisemitic Russian nationalist organization active in the first decades of the 1900s — for a new home in Argentina.

Addressing an audience at Berlin’s State Opera House that included German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, Barenboim urged solidarity with Ukrainians in the face of the ongoing Russian invasion.

“We are all incredibly moved by the courage and determination of the Ukrainians who are heroically defending their country, their lives and their freedom against the cruel invasion of a superior force,” he declared. “But it’s more than that, because we recognize that Ukrainians also defend our freedom and our values.”

At the same time, Barenboim counseled against a boycott of Russia in the cultural sphere, arguing that this would be counterproductive.

“We must not allow a witch hunt against Russian people and Russian culture, and upcoming bans and boycotts of Russian music and literature in various European countries, for example, awaken the very worst associations in my mind,” Barenboim said. As examples, he cited a ban in Poland on the public performance of music by Russian composers and the suspension — later reversed — of a course on the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky at an Italian university.

Barenboim’s speech was followed by an impassioned performance of the Ukrainian national anthem, sung by the choir of the State Opera.