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Total population | |
---|---|
2010 est. 71,500 core – 200,000 enlarged [1] 360,000–400,000 by 2014 est. [1][2] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Kyiv | 110,000[3] |
Dnipro | 60,000[3] |
Kharkiv | 45,000[3] |
Odesa | 45,000[3] |
Languages | |
Russian (83.0%), Ukrainian[4][5][6][7] (13.4%), Yiddish[4][8] (3.1%), Hebrew[9] | |
Religion | |
Judaism, Christianity and other (including atheism) | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Russian Jews, Mountain Jews, Belarusian Jews, Romanian Jews, Hungarian Jews, Polish Jews |
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Jews and Judaism |
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The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the modern territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus' (late 9th to mid-13th century).[10][11] Important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, arose there. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes Europe's third-largest and the world's fifth-largest.[3]
At times it flourished, while at other times it faced persecution and anti-Semitic discrimination. In the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–1920), Yiddish became a state language, along with Ukrainian and Russian. At that time, the Jewish National Union was created and the community was granted autonomous status.[12] Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency between 1917 and 1920.[13] Before World War II, slightly less than one-third of Ukraine's urban population consisted of Jews.[14] Ukrainian Jews included sub-groups with distinct characteristics, including Ashkenazi Jews, Mountain Jews, Bukharan Jews, Crimean Karaites, Krymchak Jews, and Georgian Jews.
In the westernmost region, Jews were mentioned for the first time in records in 1030. During the Khmelnytsky Uprising between 1648 and 1657, an army of Cossacks massacred and took large numbers of Jews, Roman Catholics, and Uniate Christians into captivity. One estimate (1996) reported that 15,000-30,000 Jews were killed or taken captive, and that 300 Jewish communities were completely destroyed.[15] More recent estimates (2014) report mortality of 3,000-6,000 people between the years 1648–1649.[16]
During 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odesa followed the death of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were recorded killed. Some sources claim this episode as the first pogrom.[17] At the start of the 20th century, anti-Jewish pogroms continued, leading to large-scale emigration. In 1915, the imperial Russian government expelled thousands of Jews from the Empire's border areas.[18][19]
During the Russian Revolution and ensuing Civil War, an estimated 31,071 Jews were killed in pogroms between 1918 and 1920.[20] During the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–21),[21] pogroms continued. In Ukraine, the number of civilian Jews killed by the Ukrainian Army under Symon Petliura during the period was estimated at between 35,000 and 100,000.[22]
Pogroms erupted in January 1919 in the northwest province of Volhynia and spread to many other regions[23] and continued until 1921.[24] The actions of the Soviet government by 1927 led to a growing antisemitism.[25]
Total civilian losses in Ukraine during World War II and the German occupation are estimated at seven million. More than one million Soviet Jews, including 225,000 in Belarus,[26] were killed by the Einsatzgruppen and their many Ukrainian supporters. Most of them were killed in Ukraine because most pre-WWII Soviet Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, of which Ukraine was the biggest part. The major massacres against Jews occurred mainly in the first phase of the occupation, although they continued until the return of the Red Army. In 1959 Ukraine had 840,000 Jews, a decrease of almost 70% from 1941 totals (within Ukraine's current borders). Ukraine's Jewish population continued to decline significantly during the Cold War. In 1989, Ukraine's Jewish population was only slightly more than half of what it was in 1959. During and after the collapse of communism in the 1990s, the majority of Jews in 1989 left the country and moved abroad (mostly to Israel).[27] Antisemitism, including violent attacks on Jews, is still a problem in Ukraine.[28]
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