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History of the Jews in Ukraine

The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the modern territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus' (late 9th to mid-13th century).[10][11] Important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, arose there. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes Europe's third-largest and the world's fifth-largest.[3]

Total population

110,000[3]

60,000[3]

45,000[3]

45,000[3]

At times it flourished, while at other times it faced persecution and anti-Semitic discrimination. In the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917-1920), Yiddish became a state language, along with Ukrainian and Russian. At that time, the Jewish National Union was created and the community was granted autonomous status.[12] Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency between 1917 and 1920.[13] Before World War II, slightly less than one-third of Ukraine's urban population consisted of Jews.[14] Ukrainian Jews included sub-groups with distinct characteristics, including Ashkenazi Jews, Mountain Jews, Bukharan Jews, Crimean Karaites, Krymchak Jews, and Georgian Jews.


In the westernmost region, Jews were mentioned for the first time in records in 1030. During the Khmelnytsky Uprising between 1648 and 1657, an army of Cossacks massacred and took large numbers of Jews, Roman Catholics, and Uniate Christians into captivity. One estimate (1996) reported that 15,000-30,000 Jews were killed or taken captive, and that 300 Jewish communities were completely destroyed.[15] More recent estimates (2014) report mortality of 3,000-6,000 people between the years 1648–1649.[16]


During 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odesa followed the death of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were recorded killed. Some sources claim this episode as the first pogrom.[17] At the start of the 20th century, anti-Jewish pogroms continued, leading to large-scale emigration. In 1915, the imperial Russian government expelled thousands of Jews from the Empire's border areas.[18][19]


During the Russian Revolution and ensuing Civil War, an estimated 31,071 Jews were killed in pogroms between 1918 and 1920.[20] During the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–21),[21] pogroms continued. In Ukraine, the number of civilian Jews killed by the Ukrainian Army under Symon Petliura during the period was estimated at between 35,000 to 100,000.[22]


Pogroms erupted in January 1919 in the northwest province of Volhynia and spread to many other regions[23] and continued until 1921.[24] The actions of the Soviet government by 1927 led to a growing antisemitism.[25]


Total civilian losses in Ukraine during World War II and the German occupation are estimated at seven million. More than one million Soviet Jews, including 225,000 in Belarus,[26] were killed by the Einsatzgruppen and their many Ukrainian supporters. Most of them were killed in Ukraine because most pre-WWII Soviet Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, of which Ukraine was the biggest part. The major massacres against Jews occurred mainly in the first phase of the occupation, although they continued until the return of the Red Army. In 1959 Ukraine had 840,000 Jews, a decrease of almost 70% from 1941 totals (within Ukraine's current borders). Ukraine's Jewish population continued to decline significantly during the Cold War. In 1989, Ukraine's Jewish population was only slightly more than half of what it was in 1959. During and after the collapse of communism in the 1990s, the majority of Jews in 1989 left the country and moved abroad (mostly to Israel).[27] Antisemitism, including violent attacks on Jews, is still a problem in Ukraine.[28]

Bolsheviks/USSR consolidation of power[edit]

In July 1919, the Central Jewish Commissariat dissolved the kehillot (Jewish Communal Councils). The kehillot had provided social services to the Jewish community.[59]


From 1919 to 1920, Jewish parties and Zionist organizations were driven underground as the Communist government sought to abolish all potential opposition.[60][61] The Yevsektsiya Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party was at the forefront of the anti-religious campaigns of the 1920s that led to the closing of religious institutions, the break-up of religious communities and the further restriction of access to religious education.[48] To that end a series of "community trials" against the Jewish religion were held. The last known such trial, on the subject of circumcision, was held in 1928 in Kharkiv.[49][50] At the same time, the body worked to establish a secular identity for the Jewish community.[51]


In 1921 many Jews[62] emigrated to Poland, as they were entitled by a peace treaty in Riga to choose the country they preferred. Several hundred thousand joined the already numerous Jewish minority of the Polish Second Republic. Also, during the interwar period, thousands of Jewish refugees from the Soviet Ukraine migrated to Romania.[63][64][65]


On 31 January 1924 the Commissariat for Nationalities' Affairs was disbanded.[66] On 29 August 1924 an official agency for Jewish resettlement, the Commission for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land (KOMZET), was established. KOMZET studied, managed and funded projects for Jewish resettlement in rural areas.[67][68] A public organization, the Society for the Agricultural Organization of Working Class Jews in the USSR (OZET), was created in January 1925 to help recruit colonists and support the colonization work of KOMZET.[69] For the first few years the government encouraged Jewish settlements, particularly in Ukraine. Support for the project dwindled throughout the next decade.[70] In 1938 OZET was disbanded, following years of declining activity. The Soviets set up three Jewish national raions in Ukraine as well as two in the Crimea – national raions occupied the 3rd level of the Soviet system, but were all disbanded by the end of World War II.[71]


The cities with the largest populations of Jews in 1926 were Odesa, 154,000 or 36.5% of the total population; Kyiv, 140,500 or 27.3%; Kharkiv, 81,500 or 19.5%; and Dnipropetrovsk, 62,000 or 26.7%. In 1931 Lviv's Jewish population numbered 98,000 or 31.9%, and in Chernivtsi, 42,600 or 37.9%.[72]


On 8 April 1929 the new Law on Religious Associations codified all previous religious legislation. All meetings of religious associations were required to have their agenda approved in advance; lists of members of religious associations had to be provided to the authorities.[73] In 1930 the Yevsektsia was dissolved,[51] leaving no central Soviet-Jewish organization. Although the body had served to undermine Jewish religious life, its dissolution led to the disintegration of Jewish secular life as well; Jewish cultural and educational organizations gradually disappeared.[74]</ref> When the Soviet government reintroduced the use of internal passports in 1933, "Jewish" was considered an ethnicity for those purposes.[75]


The Soviet famine of 1932–1933 affected the Jewish population,[76] and led to a migration from shtetls to overcrowded cities.[77]


As the Soviet government annexed territory from Poland, Romania (both would be incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR after World War II[21]) and the Baltic states,[78] roughly two million Jews became Soviet citizens.[79][80] Restrictions on Jews that had existed in those countries were lifted.[81] At the same time, Jewish organizations in the transferred territories were shut down and their leaders were arrested and exiled.[82] Approximately 250,000 Jews escaped or were evacuated from the annexed territories to the Soviet interior prior to the Nazi invasion.[83]

Jewish communities[edit]

As of 2012, Ukraine had the fifth-largest Jewish community in Europe and the twelfth-largest in the world, behind South Africa and ahead of Mexico. The majority live in Kyiv (about half),[9] Dnipro, Kharkiv and Odesa.[149] Rabbis Jonathan Markovitch of Kyiv and Shmuel Kaminetsky[150] of Dnipro are considered to be among the most influential foreigners in the country.[151] Opened in October 2012 in Dnipro, the multifunctional Menorah center is among the world's largest Jewish community centers.[152][153]


A growing trend among Israelis is to visit Ukraine on a "roots trip" to learn of Jewish life there.[154] Kyiv is usually mentioned, where it is possible to trace the paths of Sholem Aleichem and Golda Meir; Zhytomyr and Korostyshiv, where one can follow the steps of Haim Nahman Bialik; Berdychiv, where one can trace the life of Mendele Mocher Sforim; Rivne, where one can follow the course of Amos Oz; Buchach – the path of S.Y. Agnon; Drohobych – the place of Maurycy Gottlieb and Bruno Schulz.[154]

Antisemitism in Europe

Racism in Europe

Racism in Lithuania

Racism in Poland

Antisemitism in Russia

Racism in Russia

Antisemitism in the Soviet Union

Racism in the Soviet Union

Antisemitism in Ukraine

Racism in Ukraine

Galician Jews

History of the Jews in Carpathian Ruthenia

History of the Jews in Europe

History of the Jews in Kyiv

History of the Jews in Lithuania

History of the Jews in Poland

History of the Jews in Russia

History of the Jews in the Soviet Union

Israel–Lithuania relations

Israel–Poland relations

Israel–Russia relations

Soviet Union and the Arab–Israeli conflict

Israel–Ukraine relations

Janowska concentration camp

Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova

Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

Jewish gauchos

Jewish–Ukrainian relations in Eastern Galicia

List of Galician Jews

List of Polish Jews

Lithuanian Jews

Lwów Ghetto

Lwów Uprising

The Holocaust in Lithuania

The Holocaust in Poland

The Holocaust in Russia

The Holocaust in the Soviet Union

The Holocaust in Ukraine

Three hares

Wooden synagogue

Yerusalimka

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The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917: Paradox of Survival

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Distribution of the Jewish population of the USSR 1939

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Chabad-Lubavitch Centers in Ukraine

Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS

Jewish Agricultural Colonies, adjacent towns and villages in Southern Ukraine

Jewish Agricultural Colonies of South Ukraine and Crimea webpage with names and maps of Jewish settlements

Jewish Renaissance in Odessa

Video of Lecture on Jews of 17th-century Ukraine by Dr. Henry Abramson

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Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova

– search includes Ukraine and Moldova

Routes to Roots Foundation's Archive Database

– search includes Ukraine and Moldova

Routes to Roots Foundation's Image Database