Ukraine

Our largest and most comprehensive project. In total, we interviewed 264 elderly Jews and digitized 2,944 of their family pictures and personal documents.

Centropa’s interviews in Ukraine were carried out between 2001 and 2006 under the guidance of Professor Leonid Finberg, director of the Institute of Jewish Studies in Kiev. Marina Karelstein worked as our coordinator, and Ella Levitskaya, Ella Orlikova and Zhanna Litinskaya were 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 were underwritten by The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, The Jack Buncher Family Foundation, The Rich Foundation for Education and Welfare, The Austrian Federal Ministry of Culture, Art, and Education.