Jews and Ukraine

[Jan]

Ukraine, like other countries in the area, has a history of antisemitism, but it so happens now that their president is a Jew. Early on after Russia's invasion, a Russian Jewish friend of a friend told a small group (via Zoom) that Russia (not Ukraine) was the place for Jews to be. She talked about how antisemitic Ukraine was. I wish I'd asked more questions because the info made me feel funny, and I'm guessing some Russian propaganda was involved.

And I can put up a couple of links on this subject, one from Forward and one from Jewish Review of Books, from Ukrainian Jews, both of whom had emigrated and now have returned.

I think each of these allows a free read or two.
https://forward.com/news/516614/ukrai...

https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/forei...

That's enough to start. Maybe we have group members who can tell us more.

[Stacey B]

Thought I would put this in here as well.

"The Memory Keeper of Kyiv
by Erin Litteken (Author)
"A powerfully moving debut . . . Ukraine’s tragic history painfully echoes its current crisis, and on every page the Ukrainian spirit shines out, unbowed, unbent and unbroken."

[Jan]

A few years ago I plowed through Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America -- not an easy read but taught me a lot. (He also is the author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
Recently he's made his lectures from his Yale course on Ukraine available on line; says they are (were?) from the only college course on Ukraine in America.
You can find them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczL...

[LA]

In 1903 Haim Nachman Bialik traveled to Kishinev [Moldova] in the aftermath of the Kishinev Pogrom, interviewed survivors, and wrote his poem "In the City of Slaughter." The pogrom and the poem were influential in spurring eastern European Jews to organize and emigrate. The poem can be read online here:
https://faculty.history.umd.edu/BCoop...

[Jan]

LA wrote: "In 1903 Haim Nachman Bialik traveled to Kishinev [Moldova] in the aftermath of the Kishinev Pogrom, interviewed survivors, and wrote his poem "In the City of Slaughter." The pogrom and the poem wer..."

It did galvanize Eastern European Jews, but I have not been able to get over his scapegoating of diaspora Jews -- blaming them (and generally, I guess, blaming any subjugated minority) for their own subjugation -- even though it "worked."

Good for discussion. Dialogue could drain the pain, maybe. Thanks for bringing up, LA.

P.S. You may be interested in Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History by Steven J. Zipperstein. I got a lot out of that one!

[LA]

I'll add it to the list! Thanks.
--Laurie

[Jan]

LA wrote: "I'll add it to the list! Thanks.
--Laurie"

You're welcome, Laurie. Thanks for giving me a first name -- a little more personal! ☺️

[Perlie]

Jabotoinsky's novel set in Odessa -- The Five. and of course, Babel's stories.

[Jan]

Perlie wrote: "Jabotoinsky's novel set in Odessa -- The Five. and of course, Babel's stories."

Thanks, Perlie. I haven't read anything by Jabotinsky and not that much about him either, and Babel too is an unexplored continent. Good to know I'll never run out!

What's the time period for the Odessa novel, and would you like to say something on the theme?

[Jan]

Perhaps time to archive this topic? (Jews and Ukraine)
No one has updated it for more than a year.
I guess we've had more pressing things to be talking about.
Any comment? If archived, it would still be there and could be pulled back out whenever.

[Jan]

This discussion hasn't attracted updates since before Oct. 7, but I haven't archived it yet. I will say I just finished Benjamin Balint's Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History, and Balint does deal with some of the history. So since that book is a Moderator's Choice for this summer I'll just leave this in place for a while more.

I remember Balint wrote that Ukraine isn't a country with a high literary consciousness. Can't find it right off, and can't remember Balint's source. In this, Ukraine is contrasted with Poland.

If anybody has any insight along those lines, please comment.

[Denise S]

I don't have any insight but I know its a dilemma to be on Ukraine's "side" in the war against Russia. I just cannot be on their side after all the pogroms against Jews in their history. I know the current president is Jewish but that doesn't forgive the history. Russia is no better just as antisemitic, nothing to be proud of in their history either,

[Jan]

I am thinking, and it's very late tonight. When something comes to me I'll come back and say it. Thanks for your comment, Denise!

[Jan]

Denise wrote: "I don't have any insight but I know its a dilemma to be on Ukraine's "side" in the war against Russia. I just cannot be on their side after all the pogroms against Jews in their history. I know the..."

I read Benjamin Balint's book about Bruno Schulz; it was set largely in what's now Ukraine, and it raised the kinds of feelings you're speaking of, Denise. At the same time I remember one of the stories in You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism involved similar feelings about Poland. A non-Jewish woman on a cruise overheard some Jews talking about their hatred of all things Poland, which hurt her badly, since she had relatives who had died saving Jews.

Maybe a statement like Ben-Gurion's is needed here: to fight Putin's murderous invasive tactics as if there is no antisemitic Ukrainian history, and the antisemitism as though there's no Russia.

[Martin]

My father grew up in the Polish Ukraine. The history of Ukrainians during the Shoah was generally not good, to be kind . That is discussed in the yizkor books and other survivor testimonies, including my parents’. Nevertheless, I have no problem siding with Ukraine against Russia.

[Jan]

Martin wrote: "My father grew up in the Polish Ukraine. The history of Ukrainians during the Shoah was generally not good, to be kind . That is discussed in the yizkor books and other survivor testimonies, including my parents’. Nevertheless, I have no problem siding with Ukraine against Russia."

Oh my goodness, some choices we've got these days!

[Martin]

I don’t understand your response to my comment, Jan. Can you please explain?

[Jan]

Martin wrote: "I don’t understand your response to my comment, Jan. Can you please explain?"

Sorry. Trying to make an ironic exclamation, and often that or attempted humor is hard to interpret. I do support the comment you'd just made but also not wanting to come down hard on Denise for her feelings.

Thanks, Martin, for asking and giving me the opportunity to explain.

[Jan]

Martin wrote: "My father grew up in the Polish Ukraine. The history of Ukrainians during the Shoah was generally not good, to be kind . That is discussed in the yizkor books and other survivor testimonies, including my parents’. Nevertheless, I have no problem siding with Ukraine against Russia."

I'd like to ask how you got to that point, Martin. Did you have to go through any stages to get there?

[Martin]

Hi Jan. It's funny that I don't think I had to go through any stages. Maybe it's partly because I was in Kyiv twice in the late '90s and met many nice Ukrainians. I'm not sure. I think the election of Zelensky helped show me a country that's come a long way. Also, the Russian attack on Ukraine was just wrong, and it's been brutal and completely horrible. In principle, I know I shouldn't hold children and grandchildren liable for the acts of their parents and grandparents, but it's easier said than done, and I understand people who have trouble getting there with Ukrainians.

[Jan]

Martin wrote: "Hi Jan. It's funny that I don't think I had to go through any stages. Maybe it's partly because I was in Kyiv twice in the late '90s and met many nice Ukrainians. I'm not sure. I think the election..."

Thank you, Martin. That's what I was wondering about.

[Joseph]

Hello everyone,

I’m Joseph B. Stinsky. I am a scientist who worked in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry in Israel and the United States.

I recently published A Quest for Home, a memoir about growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union and building a life across Ukraine, Lithuania, Israel, and the United States.

The book reflects on identity, displacement, and what it means to find a place where one does not have to explain who they are. It is shaped by family history, immigration, and the quieter, day-to-day process of rebuilding a life across different countries and cultures.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to be here and would be glad to join the discussion or answer any questions if there is interest.

Thank you for having me.

More information: https://joseph-author-site.vercel.app

[Beryl]

I am drawn to this conversation as I continue to work on coming to terms with Ukraine, Russia, their antisemitism. Both sets of my grandparents immigrated from that area. They all said it was too horrible to talk about; they never spoke about it or spoke the language. So while I also agree the Russian attack and invasion was horrible (like all their previous) I find it challenging to support this other antisemitic country. Maybe it’s possible there’s improvements. I look forward to what you have to share. I will also look at Joseph Stinsky’s book. My grandparents came to the US and made new identities and lives here. I wish I knew more about their journeys.

[Joseph]

Much of what you describe is very familiar to me, including the silence around it.
I hope the book may offer something of that missing context, though each story is, of course, different.

[Denise S]

Joseph wrote: "Hello everyone,

I’m Joseph B. Stinsky. I am a scientist who worked in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry in Israel and the United States.

I recently published A Quest for Home, a memoi..."

Nice to meet you Joseph! I am very interested in your book - I found it on Amazon and it is a Kindle Unlimited book which makes it very easy to get as I belong to Kindle Unlimited.

I had a hard time finding it listed on Goodreads but finally found it. I started with a search for "A Quest for Home" which put it in the middle somewhere of 46 pages of titles with "Quest" in it. But, putting the tiitle then your name quickly found it.

I went to college and graduate school with a few people who grew up in the Soviet Union and are Russian Jews. I loved learning about the Soviet Union from their perspective. I studied Russian and Russian history in college and wanted to go to the Soviet Union to study in Leningrad in my third year. However, my grandmother (who was from there) got very, very upset and was convinced someone would come knocking on my door and take me away as they did to two of her brothers. So, I ended up not going I couldn't do it to her- this was in the 1970s.

Thanks for joining our group!

[Joseph]

Your grandmother’s reaction is very understandable. For many families, those experiences remained vivid long after they left. That was one of the reasons I decided to write about it.
Thank you for your interest, and for the conversation.

[Stacey B]

For me,
of all the great discussion threads posted here, is a wish/ prayer for these words "what it means to find a place where one does not have to explain who they are" to occur.

[Joseph]

When I was seventeen, a student at Moscow University, many important books were not just unavailable — they were forbidden.

Sometimes we had a book for only one night. I remember reading Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago overnight because it had to be returned in the morning. We skipped lectures, shared books, read aloud, changing readers every hour or so.
Books then felt essential. Not entertainment, not distraction — something closer to a necessity of inner life.

The Strugatsky brothers, Grossman, Orwell, Camus — very different writers, but all of them gave me the feeling that the book existed because something important had to be said.

Today I rarely experience that feeling.

Books have changed, publishing has changed, readers have changed. I have changed.

Part of me wonders whether books only feel necessary when the world makes them so — and the Soviet world made them necessary in a very particular way. Maybe our society no longer produces that exact hunger.

But I'm not sure today's world is gentle on the inner life either. The pressures are different — abundance instead of scarcity, noise instead of silence, distraction instead of prohibition — but they still seem like pressures a serious book might answer.

So I'm not ready to conclude that the feeling is gone. Maybe I just haven't found the books. Maybe I've stopped reading the way I once did. Or maybe every generation simply imagines that the books of its youth mattered more.

I would genuinely like to hear what others think.
What do you expect from your next book? Have you read one in recent years that felt truly necessary to you?

[Dvora]

Joseph wrote: "When I was seventeen, a student at Moscow University, many important books were not just unavailable — they were forbidden.

Sometimes we had a book for only one night. I remember reading Solzhenit..."

I think you're right that living where there is abundance, noise, distraction, and in the United States, the pursuit of happiness, there isn't the kind of hunger for a book that says something important -- something that has to be said.
My reading taste has changed over the years. When I was young I read fiction. Then I started reading biographies and memoirs and now I don't read much fiction, and when I do, I tend not to like it. Looking at the last six books I read, I gave a no rating to one which I didn't finish (a novel), I gave two books a 1 rating, one was a memoir, the other a biography (The Art Spy, supposedly telling about the saving of art in France from the Nazis, but it did a poor job of it), and three books got a 2 (all novels). I want to be taken away, but not just anywhere, only the few places where I want to spend some time, and I want to spend that time with people who I find interesting. But none of this is essential. In the last few years I've read a lot about the agents who operated for Britain in France during World War II, I also like to read biographies of artists and thieves, especially art thieves. I've also written two books, one a memoir, the other, a much better book about my father who lived in Moscow, Warsaw, Algiers, Kazakhstan, Nice, Sosua, New York, and Los Angeles, who survived the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust (by escaping to the Soviet Union). This is also not essential, it deals not with the big subjects, but with everyday people doing everyday things, some of them in extraordinary circumstances. Before all that other dismal reading, I read Advent by Gunnar Gunnarsson at the end of last year. I don't know if you would consider what that book has to say important. It's simply a sweet book that tells the story of a man who goes out every year at Christmas time to save lost sheep (not necessarily his own) in the blizzards of Iceland, accompanied by his dog and his ram. It's just lovely.

[Denise S]

Joseph wrote: "When I was seventeen, a student at Moscow University, many important books were not just unavailable — they were forbidden.

Sometimes we had a book for only one night. I remember reading Solzhenit..."

I don't think there is any valid comparison to the samizdat books you had to deal with and the abundance of books we have at our hands here in the West. I don't know what it is like now in Russia as to the availability of a book, it would be interesting to know. I can say I am extremely spoiled. I have never had to do anything underhand or illegal to obtain a book. I have had frustration from being unable to obtain an out-of-print book but that is an entirely different sort of thing,

Prior to becoming a widow in 2016, I read mostly nonfiction on a diverse range of subjects. Following that, I suddenly could not deal with "meaning" because there just wasn't anymore to me so I dove into fiction, thrillers, mystery - distraction and entertainment, The past year has been particularly stressful with health problems and other things so I remain with the distraction with an occasional really good nonfiction book. Yours is up next. At least I don't read romance - though there is nothing wrong with that if one enjoys it, its a different type of distraction. Who am I to judge?

I do read The New York Times (print edition) every day The Atlantic, and the New Yorker so I get a good portion of serious reading in but I do miss reading books like that. The stress keeps me from it , I find I need a release.

I was sick most of fall and winter then broke my foot which effected my balance in a very negative way, (I'm 75) so rarely got out of my apartment. Maybe once I get out - this weekend!!! my reading habits may gradually change. It will be interesting to see what happens.

[Denise S]

Addendum: Over the last few years reading several books about grief, I never found one book that totally helped me but parts of books helped me with different aspects, Some with understanding and some with ways of moving forward, Grief reared its ugly head again this year when our daughter lost her job in a field my husband also was in and if he was alive he would have helped her get one right away - the health field he was a physician. Instead, she is still unemployed because I can't help her in that field and feel terrible about it - so I grieve her loss of him all over again.

Anyone need a Master's degree data analyst in the health field? transferable to other fields. This all has to do with Trump and his DOGE dumpers.

[Jan]

Denise S wrote: "Joseph wrote: "When I was seventeen, a student at Moscow University, many important books were not just unavailable — they were forbidden.

Sometimes we had a book for only one night. I remember re..."

So, Denise, while your experience is different, still, books are very important to you!

I think in my tweens and early teens, books were a lifeline.

When clarity (or support, or pleasure, or whatever is missing) isn't forthcoming from the people and institutions, books are a stopgap. We need people, but books can tide us over until then!

Somewhere recently I read that books are subversive. Maybe even escapist books. Maybe even romance. Why slaves were supposed to be kept illiterate. Why books were banned by the Soviets. Why Jewish books are being cancelled.

Anyway, your comment reminded me of a short story you can read free online at Literary Hub if you're so inclined. Google "I Am Seventy-Five" by Helen Schulman" on Literary Hub (or it's in Fools for Love: Stories from 2025 and probably in your library. (R-rated, well-written, humor)

Best wishes to your daughter in the employment department!