Jewish Ancestry Heritage in Ukraine
Finding Jewish ancestry sites within Western Ukraine has several important aspects. The main issues in your genealogical research are:
- almost complete lack of Jewish population in today’s Western Ukrainian smaller communities
- destruction of Jewish sites in the war, and their neglect in the following years
- poorly preserved records
- many decades that elapsed since the time of existence of deeply rooted Jewish communities in Western Ukraine.
What Jewish Heritage Sites You Can Expect to Find
As a researcher of your family history, you can find Jewish landmarks in Ukraine, such as sites of former synagogues, cemeteries and historical buildings.
Synagogues
In Western Ukraine, the synagogues that survived the Second World War were empty. In the post-war years, the local authorities repurposed the former temples to house movie theaters (Chernivtsi, Olesko), furniture stores (Drohobych), gyms (Lviv, Horodenka), pumping stations (Chortkiv), to name a few. Over the recent decades, some synagogues in Ukraine have been restored, such as the Choral Synagogue in Drohobych, Beis Aharon V’Yisrael Synagogue in Lviv, Sataniv Synagogue and others. Lviv lost most of its synagogues and the two Jewish cemeteries during the Second World War.
When you visit, the Rabbis and staff at the functioning synagogue in Ukraine can be very helpful in providing information on the location of former Jewish sites, local history and records.
Cemeteries
Many Jewish cemeteries were damaged after the expulsion of Jews from Galicia and Bukovina, although some well-preserved and maintained cemeteries can be found today. Jewish cemeteries partially survived in the towns of Brody, Berezhany, Drohobych, Rohatyn, Chernivtsi, and in other locations.
Buildings
Jewish communal and cultural sites, such as orphanages, community centers, schools, and hospitals were often preserved and retained their functions in the years after the war as state-run institutions. Residential buildings in the formerly Jewish parts of Lviv and Chernivtsi survived until today without change. Some buildings were preserved remarkably well, including indentations in doorways where mezuzahs were attached by their previous Jewish owners. Jewish quarters in smaller towns of the former Russian Empire had been poorly built and were largely replaced by newer developments after the war.
Jewish Population of Western Ukraine
All towns of present-day Western Ukraine had sizable Jewish communities before the war. In large cities in Galicia, such as Lviv, Jews comprised almost one-third of all city residents. In Lviv, Jewish population concentrated in the Old Town and spread in the western direction from the town center towards the Main Railway Station. Although the original Jewish population was almost completely obliterated in the course of the War, the towns of Western Ukraine maintained a high number of Jewish residents in the post-war years comprised mostly of the Jews from outside of the lands of the former Austrian Empire and interwar Poland. This population, although Jewish by nature, had little cultural connection to Galician Jewry, mostly disassociated themselves from religion and spoke Russian. When restrictions on leaving the Soviet Union were relaxed starting from the 1970s, most of the Jewish residents had left Western Ukraine over the next two decades.
Please also consider using our GENEALOGY SERVICES in finding Jewish ancestry places in Ukraine.