History Of The Jews In Ukraine

wikipedia  |  The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus' (late 9th to mid-13th century).^[9][10] Some of the most important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, rose either fully or to an extensive degree in the territory of modern Ukraine. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes the third-largest in Europe and the fifth-largest in the world.^[3]

Whilst at times it flourished, at other times the Jewish community faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discrimination. In the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917-1920), Yiddish was declared a state language, along with Ukrainian and Russian. At that time, the Jewish National Union was created and the community was granted an autonomous status.^[11] Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency in this same period, between 1917 and 1920.^[12] Before World War II, slightly less than one-third of Ukraine's urban population consisted of Jews;^[13] they were the largest national minority in Ukraine.^{[citation needed]} Ukrainian Jews consist of a number of sub-groups with distinct characteristics, including Ashkenazi Jews, Mountain Jews, Bukharan Jews, Crimean Karaites, Krymchak Jews, and Georgian Jews.

In the westernmost area of Ukraine, 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 into captivity large numbers of Jews, Roman Catholics, and Uniate Christians. One estimate (1996) reports that 15,000-30,000 Jews were killed or taken captive, and that 300 Jewish communities were completely destroyed.^[14] More recent estimates (2014) greatly reduce the number of Jews that died during the national uprising of Ukrainians to 3,000-6,000 people between the years 1648–1649.^[15]

During the 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odesa following the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople, 14 Jews were killed. Some sources claim this episode as the first pogrom.^[16] At the start of 20th century, anti-Jewish pogroms continued to occur, leading to large-scale emigration. When Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire, antisemitic attitudes were expressed in numerous blood libel cases between 1911 and 1913.^{[citation needed]} In 1915, the Russian imperial government expelled thousands of Jews from the Empire's border areas.^[17][18]

During the conflicts of the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Russian Civil War, an estimated 31,071 Jews were killed in pogroms between 1918 and 1920.^[19] During the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–21),^[20] pogroms continued to be perpetrated on Ukrainian territory. In Ukraine, the number of civilian Jews killed by Petliura's forces during the period was estimated at between 35,000 and 50,000 to 100,000 ^[21]

Pogroms erupted in January 1919 in the northwest province of Volhynia and spread to many other regions of Ukraine.^[22] Massive pogroms continued until 1921.^[23] The actions of the Soviet government by 1927 led to a growing antisemitism in the area.^[24]

Total civilian losses during World War II and the German occupation of Ukraine are estimated at seven million. More than one million Soviet Jews, of them around 225,000 in Belarus,^[25] were shot and killed by the Einsatzgruppen and by their many local 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 thirty years earlier (in 1959). During and after the collapse of Communism in the 1990s, the majority of the Jews who remained in Ukraine in 1989 left the country and moved abroad (mostly to Israel).^[26] Antisemitic graffiti and violence against Jews are still problems in Ukraine.^[27][28]