JCU President Boris Lozhkin named four main events in the life of the Jewish community of Ukraine in 2020
The President of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine Boris Lozhkin wrote about this in the Jerusalem Post.
"In 1900, one Jew out of four in the world was living on the territory of present-day Ukraine, making it the largest Jewish country in the world," Lozhkin noted. "In the years to follow, the Jewish people of Ukraine endured a series of extraordinarily dramatic events – thousands of pogroms, the Holodomor famine, the Shoah, and eventually the Soviet anti-Semitic policies."
However, today, as the JCU President noted, "we actively witness the revival of Jewish life and traditions."
Lozhkin named several memorable events in 2020.
The largest Jewish conference in the history of Ukraine – the Kyiv Jewish Forum 2020 – has been held this year. It gathered an online audience of over 83,000 people worldwide. "In pre-Covid times, this would have meant the entire Stade de France stadium in Paris had watched our conference," Lozhkin noted.
The President of the JCU also noted that at the initiative of the confederation, the Ukrainian Jewry Research Initiative was launched at Tel Aviv University in 2020, which will coordinate academic research on the history and culture of Ukrainian Jews in Israel and abroad. This project will further distinguish the Ukrainian Jewish community from the perceived monolith of "Soviet Jewry".
Lozhkin called the signing of a historic memorandum of understanding and cooperation between the Government of Ukraine and the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) as one more important event in 2020, which includes the construction of a memorial center and synagogue in 2021.
Finally, according to Lozhkin, the implementation of the Righteous of My City initiative, which is one of the biggest JCU projects, continued in 2020. As part of this project, Lozhkin reminded, the JCU is working on identifying the people who saved Jews during the Holocaust and renaming streets, squares or parks in the cities of Ukraine after a local Righteous citizen.
"Ukraine is gradually transforming itself, coming to terms with the past, commemorating victims and acknowledging people’s history and suffering. It is a big step towards a more mature nation and a peaceful future,| the JCU head said.
We will remind that the media earlier wrote that the project of building the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center was the topic of one of the discussions at the Kyiv Jewish Forum 2020.
