“No harm will come to you here. You are safe. “ Lilly Pohlman says she will remember these words till the end of her days. Along with the memory of a giant of a man gently reassuring her after experiencing the horror of Nazi brutality. Over 150 other Jews who survived the Holocaust in Ukraine have similar memories. Three of them share their personal recollections of that gentle giant, Met. Archbishop Andrey Count Sheptytsky, in a documentary film called Saved by Sheptytsky. Released in 2012, the film was produced by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, based in Toronto, Canada. Metropolitan Sheptytsky was born in 1865 to an aristocratic family in Prylbychi, a Ukrainian village near Lviv, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1891 he left behind his privileged life to become a Ukrainian Catholic cleric. He was made bishop in 1900, and shortly afterwards became Metropolitan, the top hierarch of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Metropolitan Sheptytsky is known, for very good reason, as the saviour of Jews during World War II. Defying extreme danger, he used the administrative structure of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church to cheat the Nazis. Over 240 Ukrainian priests and nuns risked their lives hiding Jewish children. Metropolitan […]

Continue reading

Welcome to Ukrainian Jewish Heritage on Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio. I’m Peter Bejger. Consider the following:  Night songs from a neighboring village  Come drifting at times to my balcony  They quench my sorrow, caress my melancholy  Flow like liquid honey Today we would like to honor the remarkable long-term music project that is called Night Songs from a Neighboring Village. Night Songs is a concert program that combines two musical traditions—the Ukrainian and Eastern European Jewish. These traditions have co-existed and interacted for centuries. And the traditions mirror the complex relationship between the two peoples that have nurtured them. Night Songs is the brainchild of the Americans Julian Kytasty and Michael Alpert. They are both the sons of immigrants from the shared ancestral land of Ukraine. Julian Kytasty offers the deep heritage of Ukrainian folk and religious song. He is renowned as a master of the Ukrainian lute-harp, or bandura. Michael Alpert offers vocals, violin, guitar, and accordion. He draws upon klezmer music, Yiddish folk song, and the music of the Hasidic world. All three of these Jewish musical genres flourished in Ukraine. And all three of these great art forms of the Yiddish world nourished each other. And […]

Continue reading

A fascinating new book just published by Stanford University Press tackles the controversial legacy of a man in the shadows of history—Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the 17th century. Stories of Khmelnytsky, sponsored in part by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, features provocative essays by distinguished scholars from throughout North America, Europe, and Israel. Edited and introduced by Amelia Glaser, associate professor of Russian and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego, the book’s twelve engaging chapters explore the highly contested memory of the man. In brief, Khmelnytsky led a successful revolt against Polish rule in 1648, a bloody revolt that included the destruction of Jewish communities. The revolt was a major trauma in the collective memory of the Jewish people. A trauma recounted in centuries of highly evocative Jewish writings. The revolt established Ukrainian independence and the Cossacks as key players in the geopolitics of the day. And for this Khmelnytsky was hailed as a national hero. However, for many Ukrainians Khmelnytsky’s legacy is tarnished by his subsequent treaty with Moscow, which ultimately condemned Ukraine to centuries of Russian rule. The book carefully addresses, without attempting to resolve, the fundamental questions Khmelnytsky’s image provokes. […]

Continue reading

The beautiful Western Ukrainian city of Lviv has over the past few years blossomed as an artistic and cultural center, a center that is increasingly featured in the itinerary of European and global artists. The city now holds numerous festivals of national cultures. They present a full menu of events in cuisine, literature, theatre, music, as well as the visual and decorative arts. A major goal of such events is the rediscovery and appreciation of national traditions. Lviv has a long, honored, and rich history of various ethnicities. And they all have contributed to Lviv’s cultural mosaic. Jewish culture is without a doubt a fundamental element to the city’s common cultural heritage. A lively and yearly celebration of Jewish culture is now one of the highpoints of Lviv’s summer calendar. LvivKlezFest, the international festival of Jewish music, was started in 2009 to reconnect with the lost Klezmer musical culture of Jews living in Galicia. Klezmer music has enjoyed a dynamic revival and popularity in many countries hosting the Jewish Diaspora. The Lviv festival has in turn grown in scope, attracting an increasing number of international musicians who have returned to perform in one of the historic homelands of Klezmer. The […]

Continue reading

Architecture and memory. Restoration and commemoration. Cities and towns throughout Europe after the Holocaust have grappled with the issue of historic Jewish sites. Buildings once alive with dynamic communities can now sit in ruins. How can these haunted places be properly reintegrated into the contemporary life of cities? What do you need to consider? And to remember? The Western Ukrainian website Zakhid dot net recently featured a lively dialogue between Dr. Sergey Kravtsov of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Dr. Sofia Dyak of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv on these issues. Kravtsov, a specialist in synagogue architecture, was born, trained, and worked as an urban planner and architect in Lviv. Both he and Dr. Dyak have been involved in the discussions around Lviv’s historic Golden Rose Synagogue, an architectural landmark destroyed by the Nazis in the Second World War. Kravtsov noted that Jewish neighborhoods have been wiped off the map of Central and Eastern Europe. However, thanks to history, memory, and art, a mental map of this Jewish world remains. The possibility to transform this mental map into a meaningful and attractive urban space depends on several factors. First of all, current residents in […]

Continue reading

Imagine everything that is dear to you in life has been lost. Imagine your world destroyed. And imagine if you can find the strength to move ahead. In 2011 the Austrian director Paul Rosdy released his film The Last Jew from Drohobych. The documentary chronicles the astonishing path of one man’s journey through the treacherous history of Eastern Europe. Alfred Schreyer was born in 1922 in Drohobych, a thriving town then in Poland, and now in Western Ukraine. His mother Leontina was a pharmacist. His father Benno had a doctorate from the University of Zurich and was a chief chemist at an oil refinery. Both were very musical and Alfred learned to play the cello. Later, in high school, Alfred was a student of the world-renowned writer and painter Bruno Schulz. Just like Alfred, Bruno Schulz spent most of his life in Drohobych. Schulz’s acclaimed books, The Street of Crocodiles and The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, both now translated into many languages, can still be felt and seen on every street corner in Drohobych. The outbreak of the Second World War however turned Drohobych upside down. Yet life continued. Alfred graduated from high school in 1940, during […]

Continue reading

As we discussed before in a previous segment, a recent conference held in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Lviv in early June analyzed the lethal impact of destructive propaganda on community relations. The conference was organized and hosted by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Initiative. Entitled “The Seduction of Propaganda: Mass Violence in Ukraine in the 20th and 21st Centuries,” the conference outlined how propaganda used by totalitarian regimes provoked and legitimized violence against three peoples: the Jews in Hitler’s Holocaust, the Ukrainians during Stalin’s Holodomor, or Terror Famine, and the Crimean Tatars in their deportation. The conference not only addressed the historical context of propaganda, but also revealed malignant themes being used in the current Russian disinformation campaign against Ukraine. Dehumanization and demonization are classic propaganda techniques that have been recycled.  Dr. Ihor Schupak, the director of the Tkuma Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies in Dnipropetrovsk, revealed how today’s Russian propaganda against Ukrainians recalls the exact same strategy and format used by the Nazis. Ukrainians have been depicted as rats, and as aggressors. The implication here is that aggressive vermin need to be exterminated. Subtle as well as blatant anti-Semitic themes have also been used in Russian propaganda, with […]

Continue reading

The Western Ukrainian town of Brody is on my mind today. This historic town has always been in the minds of several generations of Jewish traders, writers, rabbis, and immigrants to the New World. Boris Kuzmany of the Institute of Slavonic Studies at the University of Vienna can tell us why this one particular town has retained a vitally important place in Ashkenazi Jewish memory. His fascinating article in the journal East European Jewish Affairs, entitled Brody Always On My Mind: The Mental Mapping of a Jewish City, explores just how and why little Brody became a legend. It all started with trade. Brody was always a lively centre but the tempo really picked up in 1629, when a Polish noble bought the place. There was an influx of Jewish merchant families. Jews were under the direct protection of the noble city owners and could live without any restrictions within the town and work in any profession or engage in commerce. By the middle of the eighteenth century Brody became the region’s most important hub for trans-European trade. It was the linchpin of trade between the German lands and points east into Ukraine and Russia. An affluent mercantile elite funded […]

Continue reading