A couple of weeks ago on Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, we aired a book review of the memoirs of a Jewish woman from Odessa. An engineer, who worked on a nuclear submarine station in Cuba during the height of The Cold War, shortly before a daring defection from the Soviet Union to Canada. Her name is Paulina Zelitsky, and her two-volume memoir reads like a John le Carré spy thriller. Only it’s a true story. When I reached out to her this week to get a photo for the blog post with the transcript on the Nash Holos website, Paulina dropped a bombshell, almost but not quite literally speaking, about an alarming development today that makes her story less a memoir than perhaps a prophecy. Paulina Zelitsky defected in 1971 with her two young sons and later brought her family members. To say that she has been a contributing member of Canadian society since day one is an understatement of vast proportions. But that’s a story for another time. Today we’ll talk about her book and her life in Cuba, the former Soviet Union, and her harrowing defection to Canada. Paulina Zelitsky joins me now by phone from her home in […]
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Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: Book Review—The Sea Is Only Knee Deep
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 the Soviet Union with her two young children in 1971. These two volumes explore many topics including: Stalin’s final years, Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and the dangers of defecting. Paulina’s story begins in Cuba in 1968. She is part of the engineering team designing a top secret submarine base for Soviet nuclear submarines. “My predicament was dangerous and the possibility of defection much more so.” (Vol.1, p. 1) Zelitsky’s story does not shy away from the complex political realities of life in the Soviet Union. Beginning with her birth in 1945 in postwar Odessa, Zelitsky’s Jewish family is subjected to constant scrutiny by the KGB. Despite the death of her mother from Stalin’s imposed famine of 1946-1947, Paulina is an optimistic child who loves difficult tasks. Jokingly, adults tell her, “To you any sea is only knee deep.” This Odessan motto, which is the title of […]
Continue readingUkrainian 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 who saved the lives of 88 Jewish children not once, but twice. First from the Nazi Gestapo, and again two years later, from the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. The story has come to light as the result of a film recently released in Ukraine and screened in Canada and the United States. The film recounts events of the Holocaust, but through the prism of another genocide—the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars—which itself has come to light only recently. In April of 1944, Soviet forces regained control of Crimea after more than two years of Nazi occupation. But almost immediately after the peninsula was liberated, it faced a new wave of repression from its liberators. In May of 1944, on orders of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Crimean Tatars were deported en masse. Many died in transit or were killed by the NKVD, the Soviet […]
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 mobile killing units, called the Einsatzgruppen, murdered more than a million people in Eastern Europe during World War II. His new book In Broad Daylight continues this gruesome narrative based on over 4000 interviews, as well as recently released Soviet archival materials. This new book explains how Jews were killed in broad daylight with the co-operation of their non-Jewish neighbors. “The way in which these crimes unfolded, from the predawn hours well into the night, remains little known to the general public. The goal of this book is to remedy that.” (p. xi) As a young priest, Desbois discovered that his grandfather witnessed mass murders of Jews at the Rawa Ruska camp on the Poland-Ukraine border as a French prisoner during World War II. As a result, Desbois started searching for the mass graves of those killed by the Nazi mobile killing units called the […]
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 cities (Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Montreal) between May and September 2015. Its 36 panels examined the history and interactions of these two peoples living side by side on Ukrainian lands. The panels featured texts, graphics, photographs, paintings, and maps, as well as short videos and recorded music. In 2018, Alti Rodal, the Co-director of the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter expanded on the exhibition’s narrative to explore the multi-dimensional relationships between Ukrainians and Jews inhabiting the lands of today’s Ukraine. In the Introduction, Rodal tells readers, “Our aim is to present an integrated narrative that looks at the experience of these two peoples together, in all its complexity – through periods of crisis and episodic violence, as well as long stretches of normal co-existence and multifaceted cross-cultural fertilization/cultural interaction.” (p. 7) The resulting book, A Journey through the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: From Antiquity to 1914, was published in English […]
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 during World War II by Nazi mobile killing units called the Einsatzgruppen. As the grandson of a World War II French prisoner held in the Rawa Ruska camp on the Poland-Ukraine border, Desbois wanted to know more about his grandfather’s traumatic wartime experience. His findings are documented in the very insightful book, The Holocaust by Bullets. Father Patrick Desbois has devoted his life to researching the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism, and furthering relations between Catholics and Jews. The Holocaust by Bullets documents his very first efforts to uncover the truth about events in Ukraine during the years 1941-1944. Much has been written about Nazi concentration camps, but little has been written about the Nazi massacres of Jews on Ukrainian soil and the peasants who witnessed these horrific events. The first few chapters of this book describe his early life in France, his call to the priesthood, […]
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 of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the first month on the Jewish liturgical calendar. It lasts for seven days in Israel, eight in the diaspora. On the Gregorian calendar, Passover generally corresponds with late March or early April. This year, 2019, Passover begins on Friday evening April 19th, which coincides with Good Friday on the Gregorian calendar. Passover ends Saturday evening, April 27th, the day before Easter Sunday on the Julian calendar. Passover is also known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In preparing for Pesach, Jews clean their homes and vehicles, removing every trace of leaven (or chametz, in Hebrew). This act symbolizes the haste with which the Jews left Egypt. They did not even have time to let the bread rise. It is also a symbolic purification ritual— removing the puffiness of arrogance and pride, which separates us from one another, and our Creator. […]
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 for a North American audience, but it has also been published in the Ukrainian language. It received a special recognition award at the 2016 Lviv Book Forum. Commissioned by the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter and published by the University of Toronto Press, this book attempts to fill the gap of what Jews and Ukrainians know about each other. In the Introduction, the writers state, “There is much that ordinary Ukrainians do not know about Jews and that ordinary Jews do not know about Ukrainians. There is even more that Jews and Ukrainians do not know about themselves.” (p. 1) In the twelve thematic chapters of this book, the writers construct a parallel narrative of the two groups looking at: settlement patterns, history, economics, culture, religion, language, literature, theater, architecture, art, music, the diaspora, as well as contemporary political and social life. Each writer wrote separately – one […]
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, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. He banished the Jewish people from Israel to Babylonia. Fifty years later, Babylonia was defeated by Persia, the most powerful kingdom in the world at that time. Achashverosh was the second Persian king, also known as Xerxes the Great. One day he threw a lavish party and ordered his queen, Vashti, to dance at the extravagant feast. She refused, which infuriated the king. On the advice of his counselors he deposed and banished her, as an example to other women who might be emboldened to disobey their husbands. The king now needed a new queen. So he sent his men in search for someone even more beautiful than Vashti. In the capital city, Shushan, a Jewish orphan named Hadassah lived with her uncle Mordechai, the leader of the Jews. She was kind and […]
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 within. But where exactly was it? Who created it—and why? And what was it like to live in the Pale of Settlement? Well in answer to those questions, to say “it’s complicated” is a bit of an understatement. So, let’s take a look at some historical data to uncomplicate it a bit. The Pale of Settlement was an area of 25 provinces in Czarist Russia. It was established by Empress Catherine II of Russia, also known as Catherine the Great, in 1791. You could perhaps say it was an unintended consequence of the partitions of Poland. This is a sad and troubling period of history for this once large and formidable empire. Since before the time of Christ, Jews had lived in this area where they intermarried with, and eventually converted, the Khazar people. But the main migration of Jews into the area began much […]
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