Ukraine/Russia UPDATE: Furore over Jewish heritage objects removed illegally from historic Ukrainian synagogues and now in a Moscow Jewish museum

NOTE: This updates our post from August 15 with some new material.

For nearly a decade, the collections of a Jewish museum in Moscow have included objects from two derelict historic synagogue buildings in Ukraine: the carved wooden doors from the 18th century Great Synagogue in Chortkiv and the stone inscription from above the entrance to the 17th century Great Synagogue in Pidhaitsy.

A furore has now erupted over these pieces and their presence in the Museum of Jewish History in Russia, a private institution opened in 2011 aimed, it states, at providing a “comprehensive picture of Jewish life in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, with all its varied cultural, social, and political forms.”

Ukrainian activists, media, and Jewish representatives assert that the Chortkiv doors and Pidhaitsy carving are in the museum as the result of blatant, criminal theft and that their presence there is a reflection of Russian “colonialism.”

Petition letters addressed to the Ukrainian Culture Ministry and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are being circulated, calling for help “in investigating and punishing the perpetrators of the international crime against Ukraine, namely the dismantling, illegal appropriation and export to the territory of the Russian Federation of objects of Ukrainian-Jewish cultural heritage.”

Despite the fact that the specific time and circumstances of these actions are currently unknown to us, the dismantling and export of these artifacts directly contradicts Ukrainian legislation. Therefore, these actions could not have taken place in any way in a legal way and are criminal offenses for which both the customers, the executors, and the beneficiaries must be held responsible. […] The current derelict state of these and other similar buildings is a shame for Ukrainian society, but cannot authorize the commission of criminal acts.

The museum’s curators, who are based in Jerusalem, state that the museum purchased the pieces and carried out restoration of them as a means of rescuing them from what they foresaw as destruction due to the deteriorating condition of the synagogues — despite the fact that both are listed monuments; Pidhaitsi as a monument of national importance and Chortkiv as a monument of local importance.

“Definitely, the museum is not involved in vandalism and theft, ” one of the curators, Boris Khaimovich, told JHE in an email. “And [it] is ready to return these items to Ukraine at any convenient time at its own expense.”

He said the museum had had nothing to do with the removal of the doors and carving and did not know the perpetrators. The items had already been brought to Russia when they were offered to the museum, he said. 

They were offered as separate items. And the museum, knowing that items can dissolve without a trace and disappear, acquired these items at the risk of ourselves. We restored them, put them on display and were ready to return them to Ukraine at any moment. In fact, that’s what they were put up for.

He agreed, though, “that it is strange, from a museum and legal point of view, to exhibit ‘stolen’ items and publicly admit it.” And he said he understands the reasons for such a strong reaction in Ukraine. 

Exacerbated by the brutal realities of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the situation is “extremely complex and emotionally fraught,” Prof. Ilia Rodov, of the Department of Jewish Art at Bar Ilan University, commented to JHE in an email.

It also raises issues regarding provenance, collecting, heritage protection, responsibility, and collusion in the illegal monuments trade that go well beyond this case.  (Observers noted echoes of notable cases such as when in 2001 a team from Yad Vashem cut out and removed wall paintings by Bruno Schulz from a building in Drohobycz, or when, in 2019, the 200-year-old Ark in the synagogue in Siret, Romania was dismantled and taken to Israel in a scam that saw it replaced by a crude replica.)

According to the Historic Synagogues of Europe web site,  both items have been in the Moscow Museum’s collections since 2015.

They both formed part of an exhibition from December 2017 called “In Defiance of Oblivion: In Memory of the Destroyed Synagogues of Eastern Europe, and at least the doors were featured in a 2020 exhibition called “A Challenge to Oblivion: Restoration,” as an example of the museum’s work in “rescuing and preserving unique specimens of the Jewish cultural and artistic heritage.” Also exhibited were items from synagogues elsewhere, such as the ark and other fittings from the long abandoned synagogue Odobesti, Romania, whose interior the museum said it “rescued in its entirety.”

The current furore was touched off this month by posts on social  media and much-shared articles in web portals including the news site Chortkiv.city and ukraineincognita.com, a non-profit project of local history enthusiasts.

Yakov Baranov, the head of the small Jewish community in Chorkiv, told Chortkiv.city that the massive carved wooden doors to the former synagogue, located on the territory of the Chortkiv State Medical College, had been removed illegally in 2014. He implied that they had been taken with the collusion of both local officials and Jews.

 “Influential people are involved in this scam,” he said. “And our religious leaders, unfortunately, also had a hand. One of them – I will not name their names – was carrying out orders from the chief rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar.”

He said he knew “the names of everyone who organized it, who carried out this criminal order, who facilitated it” and that he had appealed to local authorities to investigate and prosecute. In the interview he did not elaborate further or provide names.

Chortkiv.city published a photo of a declaration made  by Baranov to the Regional Interior Department already in January 2015  stating that he had been informed that the doors had been stolen and demanding action to forestall their possible transfer abroad and to obtain their return. At that time, the building, was under state ownership. The state transferred it to the Jewish community ” for free use” in October 2018.

The curators of the Moscow museum, Khaimovich and Hillel (Grygory) Kazovsky, responded to the recent accusations with an open letter reiterating the museum’s assertion that it had purchased the objects, “many years before the Russian military attack on sovereign Ukraine” with the aim of rescuing them and preserving them from destruction.

“Long-term expeditions to different regions of the former Soviet republics have convinced us that Jewish monuments are still destroyed, as they were during the years of Soviet power, and local authorities treat them with complete indifference at best,” they wrote. “Therefore, we saw our task as saving the monuments of the material culture of Eastern European Jewry that miraculously survived and were on the verge of disappearing.”

As context, they listed crumbling or collapsed synagogues in a number of towns in Ukraine, as well as botched restorations by private individuals, such as in the historic Jewish cemetery in Sataniv, where centuries-old matzevot were uprooted and set in concrete rows by a Haredi activist. (Khaimovich wrote a JHE Have Your Say oped about this.)

“All this was the result of the fact that neither Ukrainian authorities nor Jewish organizations cared about monuments of Jewish culture,” they wrote.

Khaimovich and Kazovsky also stated that in 2018, after being  approached by an initiative group from Ukraine. the museum had agreed to return the items to Ukraine “on the condition that the ‘initiative group’  would pay part of the amount spent on their restoration and would undertake their return delivery.”  They said, however, that nothing had come of this. 

In a commentary for Ukraine Incognita, Dmytro Polyukhovych (who like Khaimovich is a friend of JHE) posted the curators’ letter in full. He firmly condemned the “illegal and vandalistic” removal of the items as crimes, but noted some of the complexities of the case.

“The first thing we note here is that the museum really bought those artifacts, not stole them,” he wrote. “Yes, let’s agree – it was done for the best reasons. But in all criminal codes of the world there is an article that buying something that is known to be stolen is a crime. All the more so when the stolen goods were smuggled into the territory of Russia.”

Regarding the Pidhaitsi synagogue, the inscription itself may have been “rescued,” he wrote, but whoever hacked it out of the entrance way had destroyed decorative carving and compromised the structure. He posted a picture showing the damage. Removing the doors in Chortkiv also caused damage.

Nonetheless, he wrote, he agreed “with every word” regarding the problems of preserving Jewish cultural heritage which Khaimovich and Kazovsky had underscored “with sincere pain.”

It is, he wrote, a “huge problem” not just for Jewish cultural heritage but all monuments.

“Here we see indifference, ignorance and greed (when a historical building is destroyed for the sake of money, in order to build another shopping center or residential complex on the vacated place),” he wrote. “For example, the same unique doors [in Chortkiv] rotted under the rain for years. Why were they not removed for one of the Ukrainian museums or restored and conserved?”

He said he hoped that the the current uproar over the artifacts exported to Russia could become the catalyst for a national Jewish heritage museum.

Read the Chortkiv.city article

Read Dmytro Polyukhovych’s commentary on Ukraine Incognita, with the Museum Curators’ letter

Museum of Jewish History in Russia web site

Petition to the Foreign Ministry