Jews in the Ukraine

On the eve of the 20th century, the vast majority of the 5,400,000 Jews in the Russian Empire were confined to a region known as the “Area of Residence”. (mainly Ukraine but also Belarus, Lithuania and part of Poland). This is where, according to the expression of the writer Vasily Grossman, was the body of the Jewish people...

These populations spoke Russian, German, Polish and especially Yiddish. They were united by the same culture, even though many of their members had turned away from religion to engage in political and social struggle.

Despite the changes in sovereignty, Jews felt more like a region, city or shtetel than a country.

Consequences of the First World War (non-Soviet Ukraine).

At the end of the First World War, the disappearance of the central empires (German Reich, Austria-Hungary) and the upheavals resulting from the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia led to the dislocation of Ukraine,

its territory and its populations, especially Jews, between the different countries resulting from the peace treaties. The Jews experienced different situations (according to the political circumstances and the territories in which they were established).

Although the brief People’s Republic of Ukraine (January 1918-November 1920) gave the Jewish community the right to manage its religious, cultural and educational institutions, pogroms were nevertheless carried out, which involved all national and political forces. The situation was not better in the Ukrainian regions attached to Poland where the situation of the Jews began

to deteriorate from 1926 (year of the coup d'état of S.Pilsudski): boycotts of companies and shops, unofficial quota system in schools...

In Romania, the rise of anti-Semitism and the growing influence of racist and totalitarian theories resulted in the formation of far-right nationalist movements in Romania and the fascisation of Ukrainian independence parties.

On the other hand, the Jewish population of Transcarpathian Ukraine attached to Czechoslovakia enjoyed a peaceful existence between the two wars. Following the Munich crisis in 1938, the region was finally annexed by Hungary. The Jews began to be subject to a policy of discrimination and persecution.

Soviet Ukraine before the Holocaust

In the early years of the Soviet regime, major decisions suggested that the Jews had finally found a homeland in the USSR and more particularly in the Soviet Ukraine. However, the years 1920-1930 were marked, in the economic and public life, by a terrible disillusionment and a succession of measures that heralded the disintegration of the Jewish world. The 1920s and 1930s were hardly a golden age in the cultural sphere. Raised to the rank of official language, Yiddish developed on a large scale: use in some regions by administrations, teaching in Yiddish in state schools, abundance of newspapers, magazines, theatres and concert halls.

The year 1939

In 1939, the Jewish population of Ukraine was estimated at 2,500,000 (5 million in the USSR). That same year, the USSR annexed eastern Poland in application of the German-Soviet Pact and then, in June 1940, northern Bukovina. Nearly 300,000 Jews, fleeing the western territories of German-annexed Poland, tried to find refuge in the USSR. Considered as “activists”, the refugees were sent by thousands to prisons or labour camps. They were nevertheless able to escape the fate of 3 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis on Soviet territory...

Buczacz-Buchach-Bukach (Galicia): birthplace of Simon Wiesenthal. The market square.
© Coll. CDJC/Holocaust Memorial

Stanislawow, Stanislau, Stanislav (Galicia). On the sign is written in Hebrew and Polish: Jewish farm. Selling vegetables every day. © USHMM, courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archives

Kolomyja-Kolomyya-Kolomea in Galicia (1935). Store signs are in German, Ukrainian and Polish in Yiddish. HelB Coll. USHMM, courtesy of Sueddeutscher verlag Bilderdienst

Jews from the region of Mukatchevo (Mukatch), Subcarpathian Rutenia. The legend in Czech says: father leading son to synagogue. © Coll. CDJC/Shoah Memorial