Today we returned to Rohatyn to mark the 77th anniversary of the destruction of the city’s Jewish community. At the 1942 wartime mass grave, south of the city center, we read a prayer – El Malei Rachamim (אֵל מָלֵא רַחֲמִים, “God, full of mercy”) – for the more than three thousand Jewish victims of the first deadly “aktion” of the…
Yesterday, Rohatyn Jewish Heritage had the pleasure of participating in a public conversation with American academic historian and writer Daniel J. Walkowitz, whose book “The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World – Jewish Heritage in Europe and the United States” was published last year. The event was organized and presented at the Lviv Center For Urban History of East Central Europe,…
This is a descriptive annual report for Rohatyn Jewish Heritage (RJH), for the calendar year 2018 – in essence a year-in-review summary of our project progress and events, with an outline of our finances as well. To compare our progress in 2018 to our forecast of a year ago, see also our report for 2017. This review is heavily hyperlinked…
We are proud that Rohatyn Jewish Heritage was invited to take part in a panel discussion at the Jewish Community Center of North London (JW3) on the topic of “The Holocaust and Lost Jewish Cultural Presence in Ukraine”, an event co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Institute London and Ukrainian Jewish Encounter. I shared the panel earlier this week with Dr. Iryna…
After two years of development, Rohatyn’s new regional history and ethnographic museum “Opillya” opened to the public yesterday, and Jay and I attended the ceremony on behalf of descendants of Rohatyn Jewish families. The opening coincided with the first snowfall of the season, but that did not dampen the strong turnout led by Rohatyn’s Mayor, Deputy Mayor, numerous city staff,…
Over five days last week, Marla and I worked alongside many of our old and new friends in an organized clearing of wild vegetation at Rohatyn’s old Jewish cemetery. Using new tools paid for by generous donors as well as a lot of sweat and energy, we managed to clear roughly 80% of the large site of grasses, weeds, shrubs,…
Today in Lviv, as part of the European Days of Jewish Culture, Rohatyn Jewish Heritage was honored among other friends and colleagues in a ceremony at the office of the Lviv City Council. The event was timed with the closing of an art and memory installation entitled “A Key To The City” created last May by professor, artist, and Fulbright…
Two meetings in the past ten days have helped us make a formal start on our effort to better preserve and protect the Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust mass graves in Rohatyn. At present, none of the cemeteries or mass grave sites in Rohatyn are recognized as objects of regional or Ukrainian national heritage, and thus the four sites lack formal…
A crew of four volunteers from Sasha Nazar’s Lviv Volunteer Center joined us in Rohatyn yesterday at the new Jewish cemetery to do some much-needed clearing and cutting of waist-high wild vegetation. The work at the site began a little after 10:00 am and lasted seven hours. In addition to cutting back new growth, and clearing a corner of the…
Jay and I were in Rohatyn with friends yesterday to mark the 75th anniversary of the final Nazi aktion which liquidated the wartime Jewish ghetto. Once at the “vodokanal” north mass grave site, gathered around the memorial marker erected in 1998 by Jewish survivors and descendants of Rohatyn, our long-time friend and supporter Rabbi Kolesnik of Ivano-Frankivsk recited a prayer…