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Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: Book Review—The Sea Is Only Knee Deep

March 10, 2020 Pawlina Knyzhka Corner Audio Bookshelf, Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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 […]

Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: Ukrainian film tells the story of a Crimean Tatar who rescued Jewish children during the Holocaust

September 20, 2019 Pawlina Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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 […]

Ukrainian Jewish Heritage Book Review: In Broad Daylight

August 21, 2019 Pawlina Knyzhka Corner Audio Bookshelf, Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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 […]

Ukrainian Jewish Heritage Book Review: The Holocaust by Bullets

May 30, 2019 Pawlina Knyzhka Corner Audio Bookshelf, Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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, […]

Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: Passover 2019

April 24, 2019 Pawlina Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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. […]

Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence (Book Review: Ukrainian Jewish Heritage)

April 4, 2019 Pawlina Knyzhka Corner Audio Bookshelf, 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 […]

Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: The Jewish holiday Purim (2019)

March 20, 2019 Pawlina Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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 […]

Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: The Pale of Settlement

February 8, 2019 Pawlina Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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 […]

Ukrainian Jewish Heritage – Holocaust Museum in Fastiv

January 22, 2019 Pawlina Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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 other relatives. By their very nature, these trees are appropriately symbolic for this purpose. They’re resilient, able to adjust to different climates, enduring, strong and perdurable, just like the Jewish people. Thought to be extinct, the metasequoia was discovered in fossils in the 1940s. Today, metasequoia trees can be found in botanical gardens and parks around the world as well at a growing number of Holocaust killing sites. The trees have been planted at several sites in Ukraine and the project continues. However, it is just part of a larger endeavor. As Julia explained in our interview, which aired in June of 2018. In mid December, she shared some exciting news about the second phase of the project, the opening of a new museum. Pawlina: So Julia, you’ve been hard at work there at Remember Us, since we last talked. And this is something that you […]

Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: Felshtin Society commemoration of 1919 pogroms joined by local church in Ukraine (Part 2)

November 22, 2018 Pawlina Ukrainian Jewish Heritage

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 provided refuge and relief to the survivors. Next April, the Felshtin society will hold commemorative events to mark the centenary of this tragic historical event. We first learned of these upcoming events as well as the past events, last March when we spoke with the president of the Felshtin Society, Alan Bernstein last week, Alan joined us to share some recent developments in their ongoing preparations, which the society is very excited about. One of these is a connection with locals in Hvardiiske, including a school principal and a Catholic priest who are eager to join in this commemoration to help shed light on their town’s Jewish past. In part two of this interview, Alan shares more details about this and other connections recently made. Pawlina: So you’ve been planning this … you said actually you started thinking about this six years ago, but plans […]

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