The Ukrainian Jewish Century: exhibition in Kyiv honors Holocaust victims and Jewish resilience

What is the problem?

On January 27, the world honors the victims of the Holocaust—the Nazis' systematic extermination of specific ethnic groups in Europe, primarily Jews.

In Ukraine alone, approximately 1.6 million Jewish men, women, and children perished—shot by the Nazis, forced into brutal labor, or left to starve. One of the most tragic episodes occurred on September 29-30, 1941, when the Nazis executed around 34,000 people at Babyn Yar.

The scale of the genocide is staggering: the Nazis killed nearly 40% of all Jews in Kyiv, almost 90% in Rivne, and over 70% in Lviv.

"When we learned that the Germans were entering Ukraine, my mother and I prepared to evacuate. We couldn't convince our sick grandparents to leave, so we fled without them. When we returned in 1944, we found out they had been executed at Babyn Yar," recalls Maia Pyvovar, a Jewish woman from Kyiv, in a memoir featured at an exhibition.

Even after World War II, Jews remained vulnerable, trapped in the brutal Soviet repressive system—a persecution that Russia continues today in Ukraine, including against Jews.

What is the solution?

Reviving the historical memory of both the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples enables us to reflect on the lessons of the past and ensure such tragedies are never repeated.

"And we will certainly never return to that concentration camp called the Russian Federation," says Anatolii Podolskyi, director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies.

That is why the International Institute of Jewish History Centropa has opened an exhibition at the Living Memory Exhibition Center in Babyn Yar, Kyiv, that tells the story of different stages of the history of the Jewish people in Ukraine.

"This exhibition is a way to preserve the memory of people who overcame incredible challenges. It is a reminder to all of us about the value of life and responsibility for our actions," said Edward Serotta, director of the Institute of Jewish Studies, at the opening on January 26.

He also noted that the idea for the exhibition "The Century of Ukrainian Jews: Photographs and Stories of 1920-2024" was presented to him by Podolskyi, director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies. It was based on the first exhibition in Ukraine about the life of Jewish communities, which was exhibited in 2016 with the support of the German Embassy in Ukraine.

But today's exhibition is special, Serotta says, because it takes place on the 11th year of the war in Ukraine and tells not only the past but also the present.

"The exhibition consists of two sections"

The first section is based on over 260 interviews and 3,000 archival photographs, documenting the lives of Ukraine's Jewish communities before and during the Holocaust, including the Holodomors in Ukraine.

"My father worked for a company that supplied grain to Ukraine. He shoveled grain and tried to sneak home whatever he could fit in his boots. We used to cook that grain. We were starving terribly. I don't know how, but we managed to survive," recalls Suzanna Syrota from Pryluky, whose story is featured in the exhibition.

At the same time, we are talking not only about sad episodes in the history of Jews in Ukraine, but also about happy moments in the everyday and cultural life of their communities in Ukraine.

This includes, for example, the story of Liubov Ratmanska (who recalls 1926):

"My school was wonderful, and it was here that I first realized that I was Jewish. We had wonderful teachers, and we read Jewish authors. We also had a very good newspaper in Yiddish and Russian, which we wrote ourselves. Some famous poets came to us."

The second part of the exhibition covers the modern history of Jewry, including photographs from Lviv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Kharkiv. Among the authors of the photographs is Maksym Levin, a Ukrainian documentary filmmaker and photographer who was killed by Russians in the Kyiv region in 2022.

"We met Maksym Levin in September 2016 when he photographed one of Centropa's teacher seminars in Kyiv," recalls Serotta, the exhibition's initiator.

According to him, Levin had been closely collaborating with the institute ever since—visiting schools where exhibitions were held, photographing students, and even reaching out to Centropa with suggestions for interview subjects.

"When the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, we knew Levin wouldn't hesitate to go to the front. He sent us photos from there almost daily. Tragically, on March 13, he and his friend Oleksii Chernyshov were captured, tortured, and killed by the Russians," Serotta says.

Today, the exhibition features many of Levin's photographs—preserving his memory, courage, and talent forever.

"Together, these stories reflect a century of Jewish family life—people who were and remain an integral part of multicultural Ukraine," says Roza Tapanova, director of the Babyn Yar National Historical and Memorial Reserve.

In this context, Tapanova recalls another story featured in the exhibition. It is about the family of Elvira Borts, a Jewish woman from Mariupol, who is now nearly 90 years old. During World War II, more than 30 members of her family were shot by the Nazis, but she survived by hiding with another family.

When the full-scale invasion began, Borts and her late brother's wife, Liuba, found themselves trapped in the blockaded Mariupol, along with Liuba's daughter, Inna Zakaloka. They were all waiting for Zakaloka's son, Mark, who served at Azovstal and surrendered in 2022, along with everyone else there.

"Eventually, the women managed to leave the blockaded Mariupol for Kyiv. In November 2022, Mark was released from captivity," reads a story posted at one of the stands.

These are just a few of the hundreds of stories featured in the exhibition.

"Today, it is extremely important that the state takes care of our history, and that access to such exhibitions is free and available to everyone," says Serhii Beliaev, Deputy Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine for Heritage.