Ukraine in Context

Why do some Hasidic Jews make a pilgrimage to Ukraine?

In the eighteenth century, the regions of Podolia and Volhynia (now mainly in Ukraine) were the cradle of Hasidism, a mystical movement that emerged in the context of the messianic expectations of the day. Hasidism spread over large parts of Eastern Europe. Today Hasidic Jews can be found all over the world, and every year tens of thousands of them make a pilgrimage to the Ukrainian town of Uman, where one of the founders of Hasidism, Rabbi Nachman, is buried.

Hasidism emerged in the context of shtetlekh (singular: shtetl), small and medium-sized towns with predominant or large populations of Yiddish-speaking Jews. These communities originated on the estates of Polish aristocrats, where the Jewish population in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth enjoyed many freedoms. This was one reason local farmers, many of whom were Ukrainian speakers in eastern Poland, saw Jews as representatives of the Polish nobility and thus as their exploiters. Life in the shtetl was often characterized by immense poverty, however. At the same time, it was a place that produced its own cultural traditions and economies. More recent research has also emphasized that the shtetl was not nearly as isolated as has often been portrayed. The nineteenth century saw the emergence of shtetl literature and a flourishing Yiddish press. Today, the shtetl has taken on mythical proportions as a place that embodies the world of East European Jewry that was destroyed by the Germans.

Text: Franziska Davies

You can find a comprehensive background article by Franziska Davies about Ukraine’s Jewish history in JMB Journal #24.

Illustration: Jakob Steinhardt, Dancing Hasidim (Simhat Torah), oil on canvas, 1934; Jewish Museum Berlin, purchased with funds provided by Stiftung DKLB. Further information on this object can be found in our online collections (in German)

How has the current war affected life in Kharkiv’s Jewish community?

An interview with Alexander Kaganovsky, chair of the Jewish community in Kharkiv, who has fled Kharkiv for Hamburg

What was Jewish life in Kharkiv like before the Russian war of aggression?

Our community is one of the most vibrant in Ukraine. We have all the necessary Jewish infrastructure. There’s a school, a kindergarten, a synagogue. There are regular services, holidays are celebrated.
Recent history, starting 30 years ago when Chief Rabbi Moshe Moskovitz arrived, has been very eventful. A lot has been accomplished: Jewish life in Kharkiv has risen from the dead.

What have your responsibilities been in the community?

As the chair of the community, I had a wide variety of functions. One of them was communicating with the authorities: I represented the community to all public agencies. Or, for example, I put together invitations for visitors from abroad. All of the community’s activities passed through me in one way or another.
Also, for more than 25 years, I’ve been editor in chief of our newspaper “Geulah.” It’s a very good paper, and a very popular one, not only in Kharkiv. We have readers and subscribers around the globe.

How is the Jewish community of Kharkiv doing now?

Our Chief Rabbi has returned to Kharkiv. Despite very dangerous circumstances, he went back with his whole family.
Rosh Hashanah was celebrated of course, just as it should be. There were many humanitarian packages, which weren’t only distributed to Jews. Truly, hundreds of packages. We help all the residents of the city and the Kharkiv Raion. We distribute food.
Prayer services happen at the synagogue daily skipping a single one. Even when the rabbi wasn’t there, services were held regularly, like in the good days.

The services went on despite bombardments?

Yes, yes, under bombardments. Many people sheltered at the synagogue because moving around was too dangerous. And there are people who know how to lead services.
When it all started, people came to the synagogue simply looking for shelter. A literal refuge from bombs because all the subway stations were full of people hiding from gunfire and bombardments. Everyone who came was taken in.
Overall, it must be said that the community passed the most terrible tests with flying colors. The city center was bombarded and the synagogue is nearby. All the sanctuary windows burst. Still, all the people of Kharkhiv wherever they were tried to help our community – with all the means at their disposal. Particularly worthy of respect are those who remained in Kharkiv and did this tremendous work. Those continuing their work to help the city’s residents.

How did you make it to Hamburg? And how are you doing there?

The journey was complicated, via western Ukraine and then Budapest.
When I arrived in Hamburg I immediately got in touch with the State Rabbi of Hamburg, Rabbi Schlomo Bistritzky. And the Jewish community whose members helped us so much. We couldn’t have done it without them – not knowing the language. And because everything’s so different: different rules, different circumstances.

When did you leave, and why did you choose Hamburg?

Because our rabbi got in touch with Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky and he recommended it.
We left Kharkiv a while later. On Purim, I was already in Budapest. We spent five days there then arrived in Hamburg in northern Germany. At first we thought about going to Kiel but Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky invited us to Hamburg.

How do you like Hamburg – the city and the community?

It’s a wonderful city and a wonderful community! We were given a very heartfelt welcome. We got a lot of help and so much warmth. You can feel the people’s warmth.
Hamburg is a very beautiful city! To be honest, I didn’t expect that the city is so green and beautiful.
For now I’m occupied with bureaucracy and paperwork and day-to-day life.
The area around the Alster, the city center, the center of Hamburg is gorgeous.

Is Jewish life in Hamburg different from Jewish life in Kharkiv?

Everything is very different. Of course it’s all quite different here. In Kharkiv, the community was our family. We all built it up together. I’m not yet so familiar with things here. But it’s apparent that the community sticks together and is well organized. There is spiritual leadership, it’s palpable.
Differences? The order of services is a bit different than in Kharkiv. There are a few differences. But overall there are many commonalities.

Do the Jewish communities in German help the refugees from Ukraine?

Yes! The community helped with both organizing paperwork and appointments with the authorities. Without this help, we would have been in serious trouble. As soon as we arrived in Hamburg we were put up at a hotel. This was all possible thanks to the tremendous work of the Jewish community of Hamburg.

Your Chief Rabbi has now returned to Kharkiv. Are you considering going back?

In my mind I’m still in Kharkiv, no matter how well I’ve been doing in Hamburg. I have dedicated 30 years of my life to the community in Kharkiv.
I wish for there finally to be peace again so I can return to my city.
I would like to wish everyone a good and sweet New Year with peace, well-being, and health! Thank you!

The interview was conducted by Sofya Chernykh. Jewish Museum Berlin, September 2022

What characterizes Jewish Ukrainian’s memory culture?

For now, the Russian war of aggression has frozen debates over how to reconcile various memories within Ukraine. Ukrainian Jews are fighting in the ranks of the army, and President Volodymyr Zelensky is the most prominent symbol of the transformation of Jewish-Ukrainian relations since the start of the twentieth century.

Historically, from the Jewish perspective, the attempt to establish an independent Ukrainian nation-state was accompanied by antisemitic violence. One major conflict in modern history that was remembered differently by Jews and Ukrainians is the uprising led by the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1648–1657). To this day, many Ukrainians celebrate the rebellion as the first major national uprising, although it resulted in massive violence against Jews. Estimates put the number of Jewish deaths at around 18,000 – almost half the Jewish population of Ukraine at the time.

The greatest catastrophe for Jewish-Ukrainian relations was comprised by the events of the first half of the twentieth century. Like almost all European national movements, those in Russia and Ukraine were marked by antisemitism. Ukrainian nationalists cast Jews as the exploiters of the Ukrainian people, and old prejudices with roots in the Middle Ages and early modern times mixed with new stereotypes about Jews as the alleged profiteers of capitalism, but only in the 1920s and 1930s did radical antisemitism become one of the most influential currents in western Ukrainian nationalism. In central and eastern Ukraine, during the ensuing post-imperial civil war after the collapse of the Russian tsardom, Jews became the victims of anti-Jewish violence on a massive scale. In western Ukraine, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), established in Vienna in 1929, cooperated with the Nazi occupiers from Germany, starting in 1941. Even after OUN leaders were arrested, including Stepan Bandera, a considerable number of OUN members continued to place themselves at the SS’s disposal as local auxiliary policemen and helped identify Jews and hand them over to their murderers.

In Soviet Ukraine, which now encompassed western Ukraine due to the territorial shifts of the Second World War, the memory of the Holocaust was suppressed, as in all the republics of the Soviet Union. But in the “Thaw” after Stalin’s death in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the suppression of memory reached its limits. This is shown by the history of the site where the largest single massacre of Soviet Jews took place, the Babyn Yar Gorge. To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the massacre, a major commemorative ceremony was held in which non-Jewish Ukrainians participated and showed their solidarity with the victims. The memorial at Babyn Yar erected during the Soviet era had made no mention that the vast majority of people murdered there had been Jewish.

It is still very much the case that the Holodomor – the man-made famine planned by Stalin and his followers and extensively directed at the Ukrainian nation – is seen as the country’s “own” trauma, whereas the Holocaust is considered the “other” Jewish tragedy.

Text: Franziska Davies

You can find a comprehensive background article by Franziska Davies about Ukraine’s Jewish history in JMB Journal #24.

Illustration: The first ever Ukrainian postage stamp commemorates the Cossacks’ national uprising. Ukrainian envelope; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2022/23/0, gift of Leonid Dolgopiat

As a writer and eyewitness to the events of the current war, what can you tell us about Jewish life in Kharkiv?

Interview with Serhij Zhadan,
author and the winner of the 2022 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

Can you tell us a bit about Jewish life in Kharkiv?

I’d rather talk about how the self-perception of many Kharkivites, many Ukrainians, is changing, how the relationship to our own country is changing regardless of nationality. For example, I’ve seen how many Ukrainian Jews today, in recent years, have been supporting Ukraine. They’re making a real effort to identify with this country, with its future, and oppose the Russian occupation. This is real news, those are really big changes in the life of the country and society.

Because if you remember the ’90s, or even the 2000s, the Jewish community or, for example, the ethnic Russians and other minorities lived their own lives. They didn’t always identify with Ukraine, with the Ukrainian state.

Today it’s entirely different. Today Ukrainian society is in fact very united. Today, ethnic Ukrainians, Jews, ethnic Russians, Crimean Tatars, and other nationalities who are living in Ukraine or are Ukrainian citizens are all striving to defend Ukraine together.

Which is why, when Russian propaganda tries to justify this war, this invasion using the narrative and idea of “de-Nazification” by claiming that Nazis are in power in Kyiv, that Ukrainian society is guided by Nazi ideology it is an enormous lie. This is simply untrue. We Ukrainians are demonstrating today that we are united most of all around the idea of Ukraine as a state regardless of our ethnic identities and that all these people today are a real political nation. We are all Ukrainians defending our country.

It makes me especially angry. It’s uncomfortable to hear. Why? Because I’ve lived in Kharkiv for 30 years. Kharkiv is a truly multinational city, an open city. I talked about that today on the panel. Various different nationalities have always lived together very peacefully. They’ve loved this city and still do.

When the war started, many Kharkivites started really working towards victory, mutually supporting each other. I know a lot of people from the Jewish community in Kharkiv, and they don’t see themselves as separate, they are united with the Ukrainians, they feel part of the country, especially because they understand that this is their country that needs to be defended today.

What can art and culture offer in the current situation?

Well, for one thing, literature can document everything that happens around us. Writers can serve as witnesses to events. I believe that is one of culture’s tasks, its function, and this function is very important.

And at the same time, culture is a space where we always feel somewhat normal and balanced. In any case, we associate culture with normal life, with education, with our background, with our education. And that’s why, even today, it’s important for people – whether on the front lines or deep behind them – to listen to music, to read books, and to know that this aspect of culture exists, that there’s this big field of culture.

Your book Sky Above Kharkiv, now available in German and English, consists of your Facebook posts during the war. Do you think it will influence your future writing?

No, what can I say... I don’t think that this Facebook style will have much impact on my writing. It was not a literary experience for me. It was a social experience: I simply tried to document everything that was happening to me. I didn’t write this journal to make a book out of it. The idea for the book came later. At the time, it was simply important to be able to remember those events later, not to lose it all.

And what will our literature be like in the future? To be honest, I’m not ready to make predictions. It’s too soon to say because we’re now in the midst of a huge, dramatic, and bloody upheaval. Most of all, we should survive ourselves and preserve our country so that we can have a future.

The interview was conducted by Mirjam Bitter; Jewish Museum Berlin, Oct 2022

A recording of the event with Serhij Zhadan on 9 October 2022 will soon be available on our media library.

Why did the historical Czernowitz produce so many famous Jewish authors?

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Czernowitz developed at the eastern periphery of the Habsburg Monarchy into a city with all the administrative and cultural attributes of an Austrian Imperial city. Far from Vienna, in multilingual Bukovina, it was a place where large populations of Jews, Germans, Ukrainians, Romanians, and Poles lived. The Jewish population was guaranteed full civil rights, which allowed them to develop both politically and culturally.

There are numerous works in Yiddish, but also Hebrew works written by authors who immigrated to Israel after the Second World War, such as Aharon Appelfeld (1932–2018) and Manfred Winkler (1922–2014). Most of the Jewish literature from Czernowitz, however, was written in German, and the poetry and life of Paul Celan (1920–1970), Rose Ausländer (1901–1988), and Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (1924–1942) have continued to the present day to attract considerable interest.

Starting in the 1930s, more than fifty authors published works in local news­papers, had their first books published, and—unrelated to Vienna influences—established the first independent, modern Bukovina literature. The often-described insular character of Bukovina and the limited communicative space fostered poetic encounters in the short period before the war that ended tragically with ghettoization and the deportation and death of tens of thousands of Bukovinian Jews in the camps of Transnistria and beyond the Southern Bug in the years from 1941 to 1944.

After 1945, this literary landscape was created anew and expanded through the Czernowitz exiles in Israel, Germany, the United States, Romania, and France, whereby their experiences as survivors, as people in search of a home, and as memory bearers found expression in their literary works.

Since 1991, Czernowitz/Chernivtsi is a Ukrainian city where the historical and literary heritage does not only remember, but also refers to the present and future in trans­cultural projects.

Text: Markus Winkler

You can find the unabridged version of Markus Winkler’s essay about Czernowitz and Jewish literature in JMB Journal #24.

Illustration: Andree Volkmann, Portrait of Paul Celan (1920–1970), 2020; Jewish Museum Berlin