Before the Holocaust, Ukraine was one of the main centers of Jewish life in the world. Today, the community is much smaller. Nonetheless, the country’s president is Jewish, and Russia’s baseless accusation that Ukraine is ruled by a Nazi regime means that the Ukrainian Jewish community receives outsized global attention. We will explore topics such as Jewish religious life, Jews in the Ukrainian armed forces, assimilation, antisemitism, and emigration in a country fighting for survival.

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DAVID E. FISHMAN is a professor of Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary, teaching courses in modern Jewish history. Dr. Fishman also serves as director of Project Judaica, JTS’s program in Ukraine, which is based at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He directs the Jewish Archival Survey, which publishes guides to Jewish archival materials in the Ukraine. and travels to Ukraine regularly.

Dr. Fishman is the author of numerous books and articles on the history and culture of East European Jewry. His book The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis (ForeEdge, 2017), was winner of the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category and has been translated into ten languages. He is a member of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and serves on the editorial board of the journal Polin.