The Ukrainian Jewish Family Album

Centropa in Ukraine
Oral histories
Education
When Centropa was
founded in Vienna and
Budapest in 2000 we
did not plan to create
a Holocaust-specific
interview project. We
wanted to ask the oldest
living Jews in fifteen
European countries to tell
us stories about the entire
century—as each of them
lived it—and share with
us their family pictures.
Our team in Ukraine
interviewed 285 Jews
living in eight cities and
digitized 3,450 old family
pictures and documents.
Through their pictures and
stories, we have helped
preserve a world. Our
English language website,
where visitors can find
most of these photographs
and interviews, is www.
centropa.org.
Centropa has spent more
than a decade working in
schools in North America,
Europe, and Israel, and since
2015 we have been working
with dozens of schools here
in Ukraine.
In education, we believe
that:
• stories are universal and
stories connect us all
• no one can teach a
teacher better than
another teacher
• •students will learn more
when they create their
own projects with new
technologies
• and students love to
share those projects
with
• students in other
countries through social
media
A Centropa/Trans-History
teachers’ seminar in Lviv,
July 2015 for teachers
from Ukraine, Germany,
Poland, and the US.
Centropa’s interviews in Ukraine were carried out in 2001-2007
under the auspices of The Institute of Jewish Studies, directed by
Professor Leonid Finberg. Project Coordinator: Marina Karelshtein.
Interviewers: Zhanna Litinskskaya, Ella Orlikova, Natalia Fomina
(Odessa)
Translator: Nina Larichkina, Editor: Andrea Schellner,
Scanner: Andrey Shevchishin
Centropa’s interviews in Ukraine were underwritten by The Harry
and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, The Conference on Jewish
Material Claims Against Germany, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert
Foundation, The Austrian Federal Ministry of Culture, Education and
Science.
Students from a school
in Vinnitsa, first prize
winners in a student
video project, Our Town’s
Jewish History, in Rivne,
November 2015.
3