In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, Myra Junyk reviews The Sea is Only Knee Deep, a two-volume memoir of a nuclear scientist who defected from the Soviet Union to Canada at the height of the Cold War. The Sea is Only Knee Deep is the true story of Paulina Zelitsky’s defection to Canada from […]
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Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: Ukrainian film tells the story of a Crimean Tatar who rescued Jewish children during the Holocaust
Stories continue to surface about people in Ukraine and surrounding areas who saved Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust in WWII. Each one of them is heart-rending and inspiring in its own unique way. But one story that has emerged very recently is particularly astonishing. It is the story of a Crimean Tatar woman […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage Book Review: In Broad Daylight
In this edition of Ukrainian-Jewish Heritage, we will be discussing In Broad Daylight – The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets by Father Patrick Desbois. In 2008, Father Patrick Desbois published The Holocaust by Bullets – A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews. It described how Nazi […]
Continue readingBook Review: A Journey Through the Ukrainian_Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914
In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, we will be discussing A Journey through the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914, curated and written by Alti Rodal, the Co-Director of the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter. A Journey through the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914 was originally a traveling exhibition shown in six venues in four Canadian […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage Book Review: The Holocaust by Bullets
In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, we will be discussing The Holocaust by Bullets – A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews by Father Patrick Desbois. In 2004, Father Patrick Desbois began to research the story of the Jews, Roma and other victims murdered in Eastern Europe […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage: Passover 2019
Passover commemorates the exodus of Jews from Egypt over 3000 years ago. The timeless and universal message of this holiday is that slaves can go free, and the future can be better than the present. Passover, or Pesach, as it is called in Hebrew, is truly a festival of freedom. Passover begins in the middle […]
Continue readingJews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence (Book Review: Ukrainian Jewish Heritage)
In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, we will be discussing Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence by Paul Robert Magocsi and Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern. Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence is a comprehensive historical account of the relationship between Jews and ethnic Ukrainians, both in Ukraine and the diaspora. It was written primarily […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage: The Jewish holiday Purim (2019)
Purim is a holiday Jews observe in memory of an ancient Jewish victory. The story of Purim is recounted in the Book of Esther in the Bible. It’s a story of treachery and warfare in ancient Israel, but it has eerie parallels with the bloody 20th century in Europe. About twenty five hundred years ago, […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage: Jars Balan on Holodomor reports by Canadian journalist Rhea Clyman (Part 1)
Rhea Clyman is a journalist who is little known today in the Jewish or Ukrainian communities, or for that matter, by Canadians in general. But in her day she reached international acclaim for her coverage of the Soviet Union, including the 1932-33 man-made Ukrainian famine known as the Holodomor, and the rise of Nazi Germany. […]
Continue readingUkrainian Jewish Heritage: The Pale of Settlement
Most Jews in the diaspora can trace their ancestry to the Pale of Settlement. But what exactly IS the Pale of Settlement? It’s a term that often comes up when reading about or researching the history of Jews in Eastern Europe. Obviously, it’s a territory where Jews lived, and were in fact confined to live […]
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