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This page is an example for our student projects. You will work in groups to put together a virtual tour for your specific topic. Tours should highlight 3-4 different locales in different Eastern European countries and be linked by a theme.
This page is an example for our student projects. You will work in groups to put together a virtual tour for your specific topic. Tours should highlight 3-4 different locales in different Eastern European countries and be linked by a theme.
This presentation will explore the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe through three different cities in three different countries:
Vilnius, Lithuania
St. Petersburg, Russia
Kiev, Ukraine
Vilnius, Lithuania
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was established in 1569. Jews were granted certain rights and freedoms, working as merchants, tavern keepers, and other small tradespeople. They were protected by the aristocracy who owned the taverns and shops, and to whom they paid rents. They had their own communities in town with their own cultural and religious life, and lived, for the most part, peacefully alongside their Christian neighbors, peasants who mainly worked in agricultural pursuits. For the next 200+ years, the relative peace allowed the Jewish community to thrive, and Vilnius became the center of Jewish intellectual thought in all of Eastern Europe. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth began its decline in the late 1700s, and was completely dissolved by 1795. Without the protection of the aristocracy, the Jews in Lithuania began to suffer attacks at the hands of their neighbors. Over the next hundred and fifty years, the climate for Jews in Lithuania, and throughout Eastern Europe, would worsen. Lithuanians participated in the Nazi extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. 200,000 Jews, 90% of the community, were killed.
St. Petersburg, Russia
The history of Jews in Russia until 1917 looks very similar to the history of Jews in the rest of Eastern Europe, with small communities of Jews living apart from their Russian Orthodox peasant neighbors in shtetls, or small villages. Tsarist laws prevented Jews from moving beyond the Pale of Settlement, in what was formerly Polish and Ukrainian land, into Russia proper. However, the Russian Revolution in 1917 would see a great change in Jewish religious and civic life as many Jews joined the Communist Party in hopes of the egalitarian future promised by the Bolsheviks. Over the next few decades, large portions of the Jewish community migrated from shtetls to the cities, stopped practicing their religion, and began entering white collar professions. While Jews in the new Soviet Union had more opportunities for advancement and movement, they still faced hardships and persecution under the Soviet regime.
Special dispensation was given by the Tsar in 1869 for the synagogue, and construction began in 1879. During World War I, the synagogue was used as a hospital for wounded soldiers of all religions.
Kiev, Ukraine
Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II was the culmination of the anti-Jewish climate that had been fomenting throughout the region for centuries. In Kiev alone, on September 29-30, 1941, thirty-three thousand Jews were marched out of town and shot at Babyn Yar, a large ravine outside the city. Over the course of Nazi occupation, some 150,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed at Babyn Yar alone. Strangely, the Soviet authorities refused to admit that Jews had been singled out by the Nazis at Babyn Yar, and it was only after Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union that the memorial was created.
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