The
Period of the Independent Ukraine and Jewish National
Autonomy. [Ukrainians with Jews against Polish
imperialism - and dissolution of Jewish institutions and
pogroms 1918]
The period from March 1917 to August 1920 constitutes a
special chapter in the history of the Jews of the Ukraine.
the Ukrainians established a (col. 1517)
After 1917, in the Civil War and under the regime of S.
*Petlyura (the "Socialist" government), about 100,000 Jews
were murdered in the Ukraine (1919-20), as in the days of
Chmielnicki and with the same cruelty (col. 1517).
National Council (the Rada), which in January 1918
proclaimed the separation of the Ukraine from Russia; this
episode came to an end in August 1920, when the Red Army
completed the conquest of the Ukraine. During this time
the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement
attempted to reach an agreement with the Jews. They
established relations with the leaders of Zionism in
eastern Galicia, and jointly waged a struggle against
Polish aims in the Ukraine. During this period the Jews
were represented in the Rada (with 50 delegates), a
secretariat for Jewish affairs was established (July
1917), and a law passed on "personal national autonomy"
for the national minorities, among which the Jews were
included.
The Jewish ministry (M. *Silberfarb was the first
minister; he was succeeded by J. W. *Latzki-Bertholdi)
passed a law providing for democratic elections to the
administrative bodies of the communities (December 1918),
a Jewish National Council was formed, and the Provisional
National Council of the Jews of the Ukraine was convened
(November 1918).
These institutions were short-lived. In July 1918 the
autonomy was abolished, the Jewish ministry was dissolved
and the pogroms which then took place without the
Ukrainian government taking any effective measures to
assure the security of the Jewish population - proved that
the whole of this project had been directed more at
securing the assistance of the Jewish parties in order to
achieve complete separation from Russia than at really
developing a new positive attitude toward the Jews. (col.
1518)[Development
in Ukraine after 1917 revolution: exodus and less Jews
in Ukraine]
After the abolition of the *Pale of Settlement, with the
October 1917 Revolution, the civil war, and the disorders
which accompanied it, more than 300,000 Jews left the
Ukraine for other parts of the Soviet Union. Hence they
formed only 5.4% of the total population and 22% of the
urban population of the Ukraine in 1926, and 4.1% and
11.7% respectively in 1939.

Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971): Ukraine, vol.15,
col.1515-1516, congregation of Provisional National
Assembly (assembly of Ukrainian Jews) which took place
in Kiev, November 1918.

In 1926, 44% of them lived in 20 towns, each having over
10,000 Jews; while in 1939, 39% lived in the four cities
of Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov, and Dnepropetrovsk. This
intensified urbanization did not, however, give them
predominance in the cities, since there also was a stream
of Ukrainian peasants from the villages into the towns,
which assumed a pronounced Ukrainian character. [...]
During the 1920s and the early 1930s three Jewish
districts were created in the areas of Jewish settlement
in southeastern Ukraine (*Kalininskoye, Stalinskoye, and
*Zlatopol; see also *Yevsektsiya).
[B.D.]> (col. 1518)

<Two decades of Soviet regime did little to eradicate
the hostility against the Jews.> (col. 1517).[[Addition:
Communist terror of hunger in Ukraine 1918-1921 - NEP -
end of NEP in the 1930s
During the 1920s and 1930s orchestrated war of the working
class was dominating, so poor Jews got more rights and
former bourgeoisie was loosing all rights and got into the
Gulag system. Add to this there was famine by the
revolution and the lasting war between "Reds" and
"Whites", and add to this there was a "collectivization"
in the Ukraine which affected many Jewish peasants so
there was no bread in Ukraine at the end and millions
died. The communist regime of the "Soviet Union"
stabilized the situation by New Economic Policy (NEP)
which was abrogated in the 1930s because of suspicion of
espionage. See all this in: Yehuda
Bauer:
Joint, and see: Encyclopaedia Judaica: Russia, vol.
14, col. 458-463]].

[100,000 Jews killed in
Ukrainian Polish war 1919-1921]
<The sense of disaster was already deeply embedded in
the consciousness of European Jews by the events which
followed right after the end of World War I. The far
greater horrors of the Nazi Holocaust have by now half
obscured the murder of about (col. 1054)one hundred thousand Jews, including
women and children, in the Russian-Polish borderland,
where Ukrainian and counter-revolutionary Russian army
units systematically engaged in killing Jews in the
years 1919-21. (col. 1055)>
(from: Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971): Zionism, vol. 16,
col. 1054-1055)
[[And this was the big reason for the emigration wave of
the young generation]].

Ukraine
during World War II
<During World War II great parts of the Ukrainian
population wholeheartedly collaborated with the Nazis in
exterminating the Jews in the occupied Ukraine.> (col.
1517)
<For the history of Ukrainian Jewry after World War I
and in the Holocaust see *Russia [[but there is no
indication about WW II in Ukraine in the *Russia
article]].> (col. 1515)[[Details
about Ukraine during WW II
A big part of the Ukrainian Jews was well integrated and
could organize the flight to the central "Soviet Union"
with the communists and with the Red Army ("Big Flight
from Barbarossa", see: *Holocaust,
Rescue
from). Since 22 June 1941 Ukraine had 10 more days
time for the flight because the southern part of the front
moved only since 3 July 1941 (see: *Rumania).
The
staying Jews who had the hope that the situation would not
be so bad or were tired to fly or could not organize a
flight were denounced by the staying population who were
only waiting for the NS occupation. So, the staying Jews
were mostly annihilated by the German-Ukrainian
Einsatzgruppen in several waves 1941-1943, putting them
first into ghettos and then brought to secret places and
killed by mass shootings. Others went to the partisans or
could hide themselves in a "Christian" family or in a
forest or changed names or religion or both, or they
became "indispensable" (Germ.: "unabkömmlich") etc. At the
end of the war in the Ukraine in 1944 there was a big mass
flight of the survivors from the communist Red Army to
Palestine or to other non-communist countries. The
anti-Semitic "Christian" Orthodox church which gave the
ground and was the main force for Antisemitism is
never mentioned as culprit in this article]]. After
World War II. [Jews coming back from central "Soviet
Union" claiming for their flats, possessions and
positions]
During the last stages of World War II and in the period
after it, when Nikita Khrushchev was the ruling party man
of the Ukraine, Ukrainian Jews who, during the occupation,
fled or were evacuated to Soviet Asia, began to stream
back and claim their previous housing, possessions, and
positions.
[[Many flats and houses did not exist any more, so the
struggle for housing was enormous, also because the main
part of the Jews came from towns and not from the
countryside]].
They were met with outspoken hostility by most of the
Ukrainians who had taken their place. The administration
refused to interfere in favor of the Jews and generally
showed "understanding" for the anti-Jewish reaction, even
hushing up [[covering]] violent clashes (as, e.g., in
Kiev).
[[As since 1948 the Israel regime under dictator Ben
Gurion was cooperating with criminal CIA and criminal
"USA" Stalin cut off all connections between the eastern
and western Jewry because Israel became another "American"
state and was a stone of the encirclement of the "Soviet
Union" (which was financed also by the criminal "USA" of
course...]][Harsh
Antisemitism since Khrushchev, closed synagogues and
labor camps]
When Khrushchev became the ruling figure in the U.S.S.R.
after Stalin's death, and particularly in the 1960s, the
traditional hatred of Jews in the Ukraine was again
allowed to find free expression in pseudo-scientific
literature (e.g., the book by the professional anti-Semite
(col. 1518)
Trofim Kichko, Judaism
without Embellishment, which appeared in 1963
under the auspices of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences)
and in various popular brochures and periodicals. This
official anti-Jewish atmosphere prevailed in the Ukraine
during the whole postwar period.
[[CIA policy and Israel policy with the criminal "USA" did
not change, and after Stalin had died the "Soviet" policy
did not change either, so anti-Semitism in the "Soviet
Union only got stronger and stronger as a general act of
propaganda...]]
The only synagogue in Kharkov was closed down in 1948 and
its aged rabbi sent to a labor camp.
[[It can be admitted that there were not many synagogues
any more because Ukrainian towns were completely destroyed
by German and Russian bombings 1941-1944]].
In Kiev the only remaining synagogue was put under severe
surveillance of the secret police, more than in other
Soviet cities. Yiddish folklore concerts and shows
were almost completely banned from the Ukrainian
capital, Kiev, though they were allowed to take place
occasionally in Ukrainian provincial towns.
An interesting reaction to this trend "from above" became
noticeable in the late 1960s among Ukrainian intellectuals
who openly strove to achieve more freedom in civil and
national rights. Though engaged in defending the Ukrainian
character of their republic against "russification", some
of them went out of their way to emphasize their
solidarity with Jewish demands for the revival of Jewish
culture and education. They also identified with the
Jewish attempt to keep alive the remembrance of the
Holocaust against the official policy of obliterating it.
Young Ukrainian writers, most of them Communist Party
members, expressed this new trend in Ukrainian national
thought in various ways, and even in labor camps after
their arrest for "bourgeois nationalism". A particular
impression was made in 1966 by the speech of the writer
Ivan Dzyuba in *Babi Yar on the anniversary of the
massacre (October 29). It was published only in the West,
but it became widely known among Jews and educated
non-Jews in the Ukraine.
From 1969 some Jewish families in Kharkov, Kiev, and
Odessa were allowed to leave the U.S.S.R. for [[Herzl]]
Israel. (col. 1519)[Numbers
of Jews in the Ukraine 16th century to 1959]
<UKRAINE (Rus. Ukraina), Union Republic in the
southwestern U.S.S.R. At the close of the 16th century
there were about 45,000 Jews (out of the 100,000 Jews who
were then presumably in the whole of Poland) living in the
eastern regions of Poland which were inhabited by
Ukrainians.
Before the *Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-49 (col. 1513)
their numbers had increased to at least 150,000; in the
census of 1764, 258,000 Jews were enumerated, though in
fact their number was over 300,000.
In 1847, according to official sources, there were almost
600,000 Jews in the Ukrainian regions belonging to Russia
(the provinces of southwestern Russia - *Volhynia,
*Podolia, and *Kiev; of "Little Russia" - *Chernigov and
*Poltava; and of "New Russia" - Yekaterinoslav
(*Dnepropetrovsk), *Kherson, and Taurida), though they
actually numbered up to 900,000.
According to the population census of 1897 (the first
general census in Russia), there were 1,927,268 Jews in
these regions, 9.2% of the total population of the
Ukraine.
The census of 1926 enumerated 1,574,391 Jews in the
Ukraine, subsequent to the detachment of half of the
province of Volhynia (the second half was then within the
borders of Poland), half of the province of Taurida, and a
small section of the province of Chiernigov, while several
districts of the Don region had been incorporated into it.
The Jews then constituted 5,43% of the total population of
the Ukraine.
The census of 1939 enumerated 1,532,827 Jews in the
Ukraine (4.9% of the total).
According to the census of 1959, which also included the
Jews of the regions which had passed to Russia after World
War II (eastern *Galicia, northern *Bukovina,
*Subcarpathian Ruthenia), there were 840,319 Jews in the
Ukraine (2% of the total). According to this census, which
was generally regarded as underestimating their numbers,
Jews were concentrated in the towns of Kiev (153,500),
*Odessa (106,700), *Kharkov (84,000), Dnepropetrovsk
(52,800), *Chernovtsy (Czernowitz; 36,500), *Lvov
(24,700), and *Donetsk (21,000). About 80% of the Jews of
the Ukraine declared their mother tongue as Russian, about
17% (142,240) as Yiddish, and only about 3% as Ukrainian.
(col. 1514)