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The video series “Stories of Ukrainian Jews” is dedicated to Jews with Ukrainian roots who have made a significant contribution to world history.
The author of the project is Boris Lozhkin, President of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, Vice-President of the World Jewish Congress, European and Euro-Asian Jewish Congresses.
The common history of Jews and Ukrainians goes back over a thousand years. Until 1900, a quarter of the entire Jewish population lived in Ukraine, which made the Ukrainian Jewish community the largest in the world. The ensuing Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, the Holocaust and the Soviet anti-Semitism have led to the fact that the Jewish community of Ukraine practically ceased to exist.
“For centuries, Ukraine has been one of the brightest and largest centers of Jewish life in the world, and Ukrainian Jews have settled all over the globe. It was in Ukraine that the Hasidic movement was born and developed; the families of the greatest minds and talents of mankind – from Golda Meir and Sigmund Freud to Bob Dylan and Steven Spielberg – originate from here” Lozhkin said during the Kyiv Jewish Forum in 2020.
People from Ukraine with Jewish roots have also played a decisive role in the birth and formation of the state of Israel. Their scientific discoveries, such as Vladimir Khavkin’s vaccines against cholera and plague, have saved tens of millions of lives. In economics, they allowed the formation of currently generally accepted concepts. Few people know that GDP was first calculated in 1934 for the US Congress by Simon Kuznets.
Nowadays, Ukrainian Jews have become the founders of such high-tech companies as PayPal (Max Levchin) and WhatsApp (Jan Koum).
In recent years, Lozhkin says, the Jewish community of Ukraine has been experiencing a true revival, and the Stories of Ukrainian Jews project is helping to restore the historical memory and pay tribute to those famous Jews whose family roots are in Ukraine.