5 January 2009
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The weekend of 20/21 December saw 35 Jewish students from all over Ukraine participate in a pilot event in preparation for the launch of burial site surveys throughout Ukraine in late spring 2009. The event was held by the Jewish Student Center (Kiev) in co-operation with the local Jewish community and with the support of the Lo Tishkach Foundation and the Genesis Philanthropy Group. |
Participants took part in lectures on the Jewish history and culture of Berdychiv, visited the town’s two Jewish cemeteries and the former Jewish ghetto and met with local community leaders.
Cemetery surveys carried out by participants during the visit found that both historic cemeteries have suffered from re-development, with garages built partly on the site of the old Jewish cemetery and an amusement park located on the site of the cemetery at Shevchenko park.
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Located in the Zhytomyr Oblast almost 200 km southwest of Kiev, Berdychiv, a historic northern Ukrainian city, is of great importance in Jewish history. Jews first settled in Berdychiv in the early 18th century and by 1897 Jews made up 80% of the town’s population. It was home to many charismatic rabbis including Rabbi Levi Yitzhak. |
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His tomb can be found in a newly-refurbished ohel at the old Jewish cemetery (above).
Prior to World War II around 30,000 Jews lived in Berdychiv, almost all of whom were massacred by German troops in 1941. The Jewish population of Berdychiv now stands at several hundred people.
