Ukrainian-Jewish Relations on the Eve and during the Holocaust
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Max Weinreich Fellowship Lecture in Eastern European Jewish Studies
The Professor Bernard Choseed Memorial Fellowship and the Natalie and Mendel Racolin Memorial Fellowship Admission: Free |
This lecture will focus on prewar Ukrainian-Jewish relations, a matter that ultimately determined the attitude of the Ukrainian population toward the Jews during the Holocaust. With an emphasis on the lives of Jews and Ukrainians in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s, particular attention will be paid to the Jewish kolkhozes (collective farms) established by the Agro-Joint in Soviet Ukraine and the attitude of Ukrainians to those settlements.
Ukrainian-Jewish relations during the Holocaust will also be addressed and will concentrate on two aspects. First, the denunciation of Jews by Ukrainians, who delivered the victims to the German and Romanian authorities. The second is the rescue and safeguarding of Jews by Ukrainians, the circumstances and motivation for which will be examined. Research for this project has been based on a wide range of the YIVO archival collections, particularly Holocaust survival testimonies, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and its Agro-Joint branch documentation, as well as official German reports.
About the Speaker
Hanna Abakunova holds her PhD in Holocaust History from the University of Sheffield (UK). Currently, she is a researcher and lecturer at the Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University (Sweden and is a former post-doctoral researcher at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and Yad Vashem. Dr. Abakunova was also Professor Bernard Choseed Memorial Fellow and Natalie and Mendel Racolin Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow in East European Jewish Studies at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research for 2020-2021. Her research interests encompass history and memory of persecution of Jews and Roma during the Holocaust in Ukraine in a comparative perspective, and considers matters such as rescue and self-rescue of Jews and Roma, motivation for the rescue of Jews by non-Jews, deportations of Jews and Roma to Transnistria, and inter-ethnic relations before, during and after the Holocaust in Ukraine, especially Ukrainian-Jewish-Roma relations. Dr. Abakunova is the author and co-author of academic works published in several languages in the field of Holocaust Studies, Romani Studies, Ukrainian Studies, and Memory Studies.