Zhytomyr (also known as Zhitomir) is considered to be one of the main Jewish cities of Ukraine. Its history goes all the way back to 1486 when the first Jews got mentioned in the town’s records. Then there were centuries of slow growth till the end of the 18th century, when Jews got rights to officially settle in Zhytomyr. That time Zhytomyr became one of only two of Imperial Russia’s Jewish centers in the Pale of Settlement (Vilnius was the other). It led to a rapid explosion of Jewish population and by the end of the 19th century almost half of all inhabitants of Zhytomyr were Jews. In the early twentieth century, there were two synagogues, a public library, and a Jewish bank. The town’s Jews, numbering more than 30,000, constituted about 47 percent of its total population.

More than 40 synagogues and prayer houses served the Jewish population before the days of the horrific Holocaust. Only one of them survived. During our Jewish heritage tour, we’ll visit a newly rebuilt historical Synagogue that, after a full reconstruction started in 2013, will include a modern JCC, a soup kitchen and ‘Simcha’ home, communal offices, classrooms, a library, and a state of the art Mikvah. This major project funded by the local Jewish community under the direction of Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm, shows the revival of a community that was almost completely wiped out during the two and a half years of the Nazi occupation (July 1941 – December 1943).

During the tour we’ll visit the official Memorial for the Victims of Fascism in Bogunskiy Forrest and two landmarks of remembrance, honoring the memories of victims of Holocaust in Zhytomyr. Almost all of the 10,000 Jews, who could not escape the city before occupation, either died from starvation in a ghetto or were murdered in the forest 5km away from Zhytomyr. But for decades, there was no official recognition that the local WWII mass graves contained Jewish bodies. Only in recent years Holocaust Memorials were erected. The latest monument funded by the Goldis family from USA was opened in December of 2019 near Ivanivka village to honor the lives of thousands of Jews, including Alex Goldis‘ (the founder’s) grandparents, murdered in mass graves.

After WWII and throughout the Soviet years, when prayers and gatherings were illegal, the Jewish community of Zhytomyr was steadily declining, getting down to just 500 members by the time of Soviet Union collapse in 1991. But the birth of independent Ukraine has turned the tides, and now a city with ancient Chasidic roots is experiencing a revival with the Jewish population reaching more than 5000 people. Together we stroll through the streets and yards of old Jewish Quarters of Zhytomyr and learn about the past and present of the local Jewish community and leave town with hope for better years ahead.