{"id":14067,"date":"2019-06-24T17:42:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T17:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/?p=14067"},"modified":"2019-06-24T17:42:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T17:42:19","slug":"who-was-the-creator-of-the-jewish-renaissance-in-chernivtsi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/who-was-the-creator-of-the-jewish-renaissance-in-chernivtsi\/","title":{"rendered":"Who was the creator of the Jewish Renaissance in Chernivtsi?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The historian Iryna Yavorska talks about \u201cJerusalem on the Prut River\u201d after the war, Soviet propaganda, and the Yiddish language in Chernivtsi.<\/em><\/p>\n

Andriy Kobalia:<\/strong> \u00a0The Second World War changed the face of many Ukrainian cities. They ceased being multicultural. In Chernivtsi, however, despite the Holocaust, a Jewish literary renaissance began in the city after the arrival of Soviet power. Its creators were not local Jews but natives of Bessarabia and central Ukraine. According to the historian Iryna Yavorska, who studies the Jewish history of Bukovyna, the residents of Chernivtsi who survived by fleeing the city were not always willing to return. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Iryna Yavorska<\/strong>: \u00a0If we are talking about the postwar period, we have to begin with March 1944, when the Red Army entered the territory of Bukovyna. It was followed by Jews from the camps of Transnistria, whose prisoners had been liberated by Soviet troops. Naturally, some Jewish males were instantly called up, while the greater part were sent to labor camps. Some Jews returned to their homes. Admittedly, attitudes to them varied. Jews remembered well that black month of July of 1941, when Jewish pogroms took place in some Bukovynian villages. At the time, crowds of emotional Romanian and Ukrainian villagers treated Jews brutally in the first days of the war.<\/p>\n

Andriy Kobalia: <\/strong>\u00a0And all this, probably, against the background of the disappearance of the monopoly on violence in the Soviet Union, when chaos erupted right after the Nazis arrived. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Iryna Yavorska: <\/strong>\u00a0Yes. There are memoirs of Jews from April 1944, when they stopped near the bridge across the Prut River and were afraid to cross it. Sometime later the new Soviet leadership, introducing administrative methods, began to set up their model of restoring the economy. Families began to return to Chernivtsi.<\/p>\n

Besides Ukrainian Jews, members of the Soviet nomenklatura moved here, hoping to settle down. For example, my mother worked with a woman from Saratov; she was so overjoyed. She said [in Russian]: \u201cGirls, I live opposite a fountain!\u201d In comparison with the backwoods of Russia, occupying an apartment in Chernivtsi opposite a fountain was a big achievement. In my dissertation I mention that on 28 June Comrade Pozhidaev moved to a street opposite a synagogue; he brought with him three generations of his family as well as chickens, pigs, and even a cow. That\u2019s what the \u201cLittle Paris\u201d and \u201cJerusalem on the Prut\u201d was transformed into.<\/p>\n

Returning to Jewish history, not just Ukrainian Jews returned to the city but also Romanian Jews from southern Bukovyna and Jews from Bessarabia, who had nowhere to go back to because their houses had been destroyed. Chernivtsi became saturated with Jews.<\/p>\n

Andriy Kobalia<\/strong>: \u00a0And despite all this, in your paper delivered at the conference on Yiddish culture and language, you spoke about a Jewish literary renaissance. How could all this have emerged under such circumstances? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Iryna Yavorska: <\/strong>\u00a0The literary renaissance is connected more with Bessarabian Jewry. An exodus of Chernivtsi and Bukovynian Jews took place in 1944\u20131946. Initially, this was an illegal migration, because people knew about 1940, when Soviet power was established here. They remembered the brutalities and expropriations, and they said: \u201cWe don\u2019t want a reprise.\u201d After them, young Zionists fled, then those who had cooperated with the Germans and the Romanians. In Romania, those who survived the Holocaust were awarded material compensation. In the USSR this question was not even raised. The Soviets believed that everyone suffered in the war, that many people lost family members, and that there should not be any special compensation for Jews. That\u2019s why in 1945\u20131946 the majority of Jews of Chernivtsi left for Romania, and from there they went to Palestine, when Israel was created in 1948.<\/p>\n

This vacuum was filled by incoming Bessarabian Jews and Jews from central Ukraine. That\u2019s why the renaissance and resurgence of Yiddish culture are not about those who had lived in Chernivtsi for decades.<\/p>\n

If we jump to 1959, of the 40,000 Jews in Bukovyna, over 20,000 called Yiddish their native language. Imagine how many there were in the 1940s. This is a large number. The Jewish State Theater functioned from 1945 to1950. It was founded in Kyiv but owing to the fact that the building had been destroyed, it moved temporarily to Chernivtsi, where the building of today\u2019s Academic Palace was offered to it. They were not very happy about this because they had had more spectators in Kyiv. But they enjoyed immense success here for five years. I know people who attended these concerts. Beautiful Jewish music was performed there. Yiddish is generally an extraordinarily musical language. It was something homey, good, prewar. And it was a uniting force. And there were also writers and artists. All this was elevated by the existence of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.<\/p>\n

There was also a Jewish school. Admittedly, it was called the \u201cIncomplete High school \u211618,\u201d but there were 406 pupils. All the teachers were Jews. The Yiddish language was not identified as a native language. There was a teacher of the Ukrainian and Russian languages. Yiddish was taught as a foreign language. But this language was taught up to 1948.<\/p>\n

Andriy Kobalia<\/strong>: \u00a0Does this school still exist?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Iryna Yavorska: <\/strong>\u00a0Of course not. It was closed in 1948, and the theater\u2014two years later. The pupils were transferred to other schools.<\/p>\n

Andriy Kobalia: \u00a0Now we can talk about the end of the 1940s. Was this theater ideologically engaged? Were they forced to talk about the \u201cglorious party\u201d? <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Iryna Yavorska: <\/strong>\u00a0Of course. How could it have been otherwise? When the trials of theater workers began in 1948, all these people were sentenced to between five and ten years. They were accused of taking part in replenishing library collections, for performances in Jewish schools, emphasizing Jewish exceptionalism, for their too enthusiastic love of Yiddish. I read the reports on the interrogations of these figures. It is frightening to read. They wrote subsequently: \u201cForgive me my friends. I had to tell everything about you because they were beating me so much. I had to say who headed some anti-Soviet organization.\u201d People were weak, so\u2026<\/p>\n

Andriy Kobalia: \u00a0In other words, the postwar Stalinist repressions destroyed this renaissance? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Iryna Yavorska:<\/strong> \u00a0Yes. Perhaps it was too brilliant for the USSR. When I was researching the topic, I gained the impression that this splash was too powerful, which could not have helped piquing the Soviet government, although where ideology was concerned, theaters held performances that did include Sholem Aleichem\u2019s repertoire because he was so apolitical and domestic. Of course, demands were made of the theater. The first performance was I Live<\/em>, and later various anti-fascist and anti-German works. I read correspondence in which directors were forced to put finishing touches on certain episodes so that they would have Soviet coloration. It was difficult for them to preserve the language and to satisfy ideological requirements. It was a very hard period\u2026<\/p>\n

Andriy Kobalia: \u00a0Have some of the works that this theater staged retained their worth to this day? Today many Soviet texts are worthless because they were created in order to obtain an apartment. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Iryna Yavorska<\/strong>: \u00a0Of course! The works of Sholem Aleichem are eternal. Tevye the Dairyman<\/em> and Wandering Stars<\/em> are important not only to Jews but to the world.<\/p>\n

Andriy Kobalia: \u00a0The repressed Jews of Chernivtsi were all tried together in a single case, which also swept up residents of Bessarabia. None of them were shot, but many had to leave Chernivtsi forever. The theater and the Jewish school disappeared along with them. The historian Iryna Yavorska recounted details of Jewish life following the repressions of the 1940s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Iryna Yavorska<\/strong>: \u00a0The bearers of the Yiddish language in the 1950s were religious Jews, the older generation that sometimes did not even know how to write, and Yiddish was their only language. They concealed their Jewishness within themselves. They led a double life. At home, people were Jews, they celebrated the Sabbath, placed a candle on the windowsill. But on the street they overfulfilled socialist norms. It was a hidden Jewishness. But then the Sidi Tal ensemble<\/a> appears. It was founded in Chernivtsi and was basically the only such collective in Ukraine that promoted the Yiddish language. It was our pride and beauty. My music teacher was a former actress of the Jewish Theater. She welcomed Sidi Tal as guests to her home. I played Mozart, and they would chat in Yiddish. Her concerts were a real celebration of the Yiddish language. They were optimistic. I liked the titles of the performances, for example, \u201cIt Is Beneficial to Laugh\u201d or \u201cEverything Will Be Fine.\u201d<\/p>\n