Bid to preserve Jewish heritage gains momentum
LVIV, Ukraine — The city of Lviv, once a major center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, is commemorating the 75th anniversary of the annihilation of its Jewish population by Nazi Germany and honoring those working to preserve what they can of that vanished world.
City authorities honored recipients during a ceremony Sunday with 75 sculptured glass keys modeled by an American artist on an old metal synagogue key that she found at a Lviv market. The commemorations, including a concert amid the ruins of synagogues, come amid a larger effort to revive memories of the Jews who were once an integral part of life in the region.
“God forbid our city once suffered such a misfortune,” Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said at the ceremony. “Today we cannot even imagine for a moment the pain, humiliation and grief that thousands of Lviv’s people suffered in the last century.”
Iryna Matsevko, deputy director of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe and one of the organizers, said it was the first time the western Ukrainian city has acknowledged the efforts in such an extensive way.
She said it comes amid a growing consciousness in Ukrainian society of the need to remember the Jews who were annihilated by Nazi forces during their occupation of Eastern Europe, which occurred with the participation of local people in some cases.
The new efforts have included introducing Jewish history courses at universities, new research by young Ukrainian scholars and grassroots efforts by local teachers and other volunteers that otherwise get little attention. Volunteers also have worked to recover Jewish gravestones that were used to pave roads and return them to cemeteries.
“This is part of the process of reviving the memory of the Jewish heritage. Of course, this process is slow. I want it to be quicker, but for the last 10 years we have seen how the Jewish heritage is returning to people’s consciousness and a lot of activities are taking place,” Matsevko said. “It is very important that people are being acknowledged for their work in Jewish heritage.”
Among those honored was Marla Raucher Osborn, an American who heads the Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, which is restoring a cemetery in nearby Rohatyn among other projects. She said she was honored to be acknowledged along with the local activists “working quietly in local communities recovering Jewish memory with little or no knowledge of their projects outside of those communities, especially among the distant Jewish diaspora.”