Memories of Survival: Ukraine and Jews

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The session will discuss the various strategies of Jewish survival in Ukraine, and the ways these strategies are commemorated, or anticipate a future memories and future survivals. In her paper "History and Remembering: Babyn Yar," Lisa Wakamiya proposes to discuss "A Walk to Caesarea," also known as "Eli, Eli," the poem by the Hungarian Jewish resistance fighter Hannah Szenes and its performance by the Ensemble of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Marina Sapritsky-Nahum's "Tradition and Survival: Jewish Communities of Care during the Russian-Ukrainian War "addresses the way the memory of the Jewish tradition facilitates communal support and survival and how the war also brought many previously unaffiliated Jews into religious congregations and Jewish community programs. Dragan Kujundžić proposes to read on "The Photographic Memory: A Girl Celebrates Purim." It will focus on the Sigma Agency photograph of "A girl in a Purim costume in the colors of the Ukrainian flag dances." The paper will analyze a different history for Ukraine and Jews which is "memorized" in this image of a woman dancing on Purim. Like Esther, this woman is victorious and is a foreboding of a future victory and survival of both Ukraine and Jews.

Sub Unit

• Jewish Studies

Chair

• Ingrid Kleespies, U of Florida

Papers

• History and Remembering: Babyn Yar - Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya, Florida State U

• Tradition and Survival: Jewish Communities of Care during the Russian-Ukrainian War - Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)

• Photographic Memory: A Girl Celebrates Purim - Dragan Kujundzic, U of Florida

Discussant

• Robert Romanchuk, Florida State U