The stormy, yet rich history of the Jews in Ukraine

[Behind the Aegis]

Ukraine is in the news. Daily reports pour in about the buildup of Russian troops – as many as 130,000, to the north, east and south of the country. Diplomatic activity is also escalating but without a clear path to resolving the situation. NATO is on alert. Ukrainian civilians are beginning to train militia-style to resist a possible invasion. Worst of all are the projections of massive casualties, especially if the capital city of Kiev is attacked. It is a “night of watching” (Exodus 12:42) for Ukraine.

In the middle of this storm is Ukraine’s Jewish community and remarkably, although only 100,000 Ukrainians are Jews at this moment, the President of the country, Volodymr Zelensky, is Jewish and embraces his identity. Few countries, including the United States, can make that claim. Eight decades ago, members of the Zelensky family were murdered during the Holocaust and others fought in the Red Army.

Another surprising fact about the Ukrainian Jewish heritage is that the novel on which the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” is based, “Tevye the Dairyman”, is most likely modeled on shtetlach in Ukraine where Tevye’s creator, Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916), grew up. At the end of the 19th century, Ukraine was in the Pale of Settlement, a vast area established by the Czars to quarantine Jews along the western border of the vast Russian Empire. The Pale included not only Ukraine but also Poland and other large centers of Jewish population. Indeed, the territory of the Pale was the site of the largest Jewish population in the world until the Shoah.

Today, it’s hard to know exactly how many Jews live in Ukraine, but it’s believed to be about 100,000, down considerably from 400,000 before the massive waves of Jewish emigration at the end of the 20th century. At its high point, Ukraine had more than a million Jews whose native language was nearly 100% Yiddish.

more...

[El Supremo]

1. My barber is from Ukraine.

He is part Jewish and Orthodox Christian and was in the Red Army. He also speaks German.

[70sEraVet]

2. Great article.

Had no idea Ze!ensky was Jewish. I respect him more and more. Hope the Western world supports him.

[Raftergirl]

3. My paternal side of the family is from Ukraine

My grandmother came from Ukraine to the US in 1917 and my grandfather in 1915. They met in the states. My grandfather and my dad always believed all the rest of his family was killed during WWII, as they lost contact with each other after the war broke out and never heard from them again. My grandmother was an only child and orphaned when she was a child so raised by the grandparents in Kyiv. She had an uncle here when she arrived, so we always knew her family’s history.

Then three years ago, after doing DNA testing, I found my father’s first cousin and his family in California. The son contacted me. They didn’t leave Ukrainie until the mid 1990’s when it again got very bad for the Jews there. My cousin filled in a lot of my history and now I know who my great grandfather was and my grandfathers brothers.

My maternal grandfather’s side also lived in the Pale, in present day Lithuania, but they were all here by 1900.

[Behind the Aegis]

4. I have a similar situation.

My father's father's father and mother are from Belarus, but when they came here it was known as Russia. My father's mother's parents were from what is now Ukraine. It has been difficult tracking down information because most of the family is dead and my father, in his 70s, isn't real sure who was from where. There is also the problem of language. Some of the shtetls were written one way in Yiddish, one way in Russian, and then when transcribed to English, come out in all sorts of configurations. Of course, some of the shtetls had a Jewish name, a Russian name, a Ukranian/Lithuanian/Latvian/Polish/Belarussian name, and they might be similar or wildly different.

From the pogroms to WWII, many Jewish records no longer exist, and it is difficult to track down information; it doesn't help that the current situation in those countries can make it damn near impossible to get information on Jews.

[Raftergirl]

5. I also know the names of the shtetls where my mom's paternal side of the family is from

but they have been changed so it’s been difficult to figure out exactly where it would be now. We have a whole written family history on that side and a cousin who did extensive research - tracing back to a relative in Spain in the 1700’s who fled to France and his descendants (my mother’s paternal grandmother father’s family) eventually ending up in Lithuania. We even know her grandmother’s mother’s first and last name and her siblings. These people would have been born around mid 1800’s at the latest. My grandfather (who came when here when he was a baby) when asked where he was born, wasn’t even sure. He always said sometimes it was Poland, sometimes it was Russia.

On my dad’s side the cousin I found has given me lots of info on the town they were from and an article, written after the war where a women was telling who the families were who lived on her street when she was growing up and one of the families was my grandfather’s.

He also found my grandfather’s records from when he came here. My grandfather died when my dad was 15 (right at beginning of the war) and his grandfather died during the war so neither of our fathers knew a lot of the history because their dad’s died when they were young and they never really asked many questions - because teenage boys just don’t.

My cousin is very into researching and just found info on another of our grandfather’s siblings and is going to send my mom the info on him.