Our largest and most comprehensive project. Centropa’s interviews in Ukraine are carried out under the guidance of Professor Leonid Finberg, director of the Institute of Jewish Studies in Kiev. Marina Karelstein works as our coordinator, and Ella Levitskaya and Zhanna Litinskaya are among our most productive interviewers.

Ukraine is an enormous country and the pre-Holocaust Jewish experience quite varied: from Jews born in interbellum Romania (Czernovitz) to interbellum Poland (Lvov), as well as Jews who had been born in shtetls and small towns in the east of the country and in the Black Sea port of Odessa, where most of our interviews were conducted by Natalia Fomina.

Centropa’s interviews in Ukraine are underwritten by The Conference on Material Claims Against Germany, The Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Fund, The Jewish Federation of Chicago, The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, The Rich Foundation for Education and Welfare, The Hanadiv Charitable Foundation.