JHE friends Christian Herrmann, Marla Raucher and Jay Osborn, and others have been on a group road trip visiting sites of Jewish heritage in western Ukraine.
On his blog Vanished World, Christian has posted striking photographs and brief descriptions of what they have been seeing — Jewish cemeteries and (mainly) abandoned synagogues.
Stops have included Bibrka, Rohatyn, Berezhany, and Kosova; Hrymailiv, Sataniv, Husiatyn, Chabarivka, and Probizhna.
the future of the former Great Synagogue [in Berezhany] looks bleak. Since my visit in 2013 the situation worsened. Walls are in danger to collapse and rampant vegetation takes the place over.
There is more hope for the small synagogue in neighboring Kosova. The building is under restoration and will hopefully be a home for a museum. It took us some time to find the remains of the Jewish cemetery. Thanks to Jay’s old maps we finally manage to do so. We found mainly empty space and only fragments of tombstones. While looking around a man with a dog joined us. He introduced himself as Ihor. He owns a house directly next to the cemetery. “My grandmother remembered the Jews of Kosova”, he told us, “and she also witnessed how they were shot by the Germans not far from here”.
We have posted about several of these places on Jewish Heritage Europe over the years.
Our recent Have Your Say article by Eliyana Adler focuses on her visit to Probizhna and reflects on the “odd phenomenon” of Jewish heritage travel and the impact of visiting physical spaces — wondering about both their enduring presence and their eventual disappearance.
For those on Facebook, Marla Raucher Osborn has posted photo galleries, with description, documenting the trip — they can be viewed HERE and HERE.
The work she and Jay have been carrying out in Rohatyn were the focus of a recent article in Tablet Magazine.
1 comment on “Ukraine travelogue: Road trip notes to Jewish heritage sites”
Thanks, it has been a great trip – with all the emotions – and not over yet!