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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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. […]
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 […]
In this edition of Ukrainian Jewish Heritage, we’ll be speaking again with Julia Korsunsky, the executive director of RememberUs.org, a nonprofit organization based in Massachusetts. We were first introduced to RememberUs.org when we learned about their project of planting metasequoia trees at mass grave sites of Holocaust victims. These include her own great-grandparents and many […]
The Felshtin Society is named after a Ukrainian shtetl called Felshtin, which today is the town of Hvardiiske. The Felshtin Society began as a benevolent society organized in 1905 in New York City and is still active today. In 1919 after 600 Jews perished in a brutal pogrom which took place in Felshtin, the society […]
