Tucked away in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in today’s western Ukraine is evidence of some of Europe’s most astonishing Jewish cultural heritage. For hundreds of years, this area – historically, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in the Ukrainian region of Zakarpattia – was home to dozens of Jewish communities dotted around every village and town in the area. In the vast majority of these locations, Jewish communities no longer exist but evidence of their vibrancy is shown by cemeteries, some protected, others considerably less so, which still bear testimony to these communities.
The cemeteries and indeed the communities themselves are atypical of those surveyed by Lo Tishkach to date in other parts of Ukraine. Generally poor and isolated communities as they were, they were untouched by the Soviet Union until the post-war period and therefore maintained much of their rich and largely Chassidic heritage well into the 20th century.
Similarly, the history of these Jewish communities in the Shoah meant that they befell the same fate as that of other Hungarian Jews who perished in the death camps in 1944 rather than in the wave of mass killings by Nazi Einzatgruppen units which befell most of the Jewish communities of the Soviet Union in 1941-2.
Lo Tishkach survey work, undertaken together with the Centre for Jewish Education in Ukraine, began in Zakarpattia in the summer of 2010, with surveys throughout Uzhhorodskyi Raion. Data from these surveys – as well as some of our most emblematic photographs – is currently being processed and a report into the state of these sites is scheduled for publication in the coming weeks, incorporating details of works required to ensure their long-term protection and memorialisation.
Surveys in an additional three raions in Zakarpattia will take place in the spring and summer of 2011. In all, according to our current records, there are more than 150 sites in this region although, in common with our other survey work, we often find additional sites which we were not previously aware of.
