Dnipro History 3: World War I to Present

World War I in Dnipropetrovsk

In May 1915, nine months after Russia entered World War I, German troops were making headway into Baltic coastal Russia. Theories about the Jews serving as spies for the Germans ran wild. As a result, the Russian authorities expelled the Jews of Kaunas and Courland (now in Lithuania and Latvia, respectively) and sent thousands of them to Yekaterinoslav.

Goldbrot reports in the Yizkor Book that the Yekaterinoslav community of Jews “did everything to help. The young people, in particular, devoted strength and energy to organize the refugees. The local aid committee … collected large sums of money.… The refugees received apartments and medical care and managed to find work, the children were accepted in the local schools or new schools were opened for them.” Some of these Litvak exiles settled in Yekaterinoslav and built their lives there.

Largely, Yekaterinoslav’s Jewish community excelled economically and socially during this time of war, establishing and strengthening civic, religious, charitable and educational institutions throughout the city.

1917–1921 Revolution and Civil War

The short, dramatic period in Ukraine’s history from 1917 to 1921 was a hopeful time for the Jews of the city. The Czarist regime fell and the city was renamed Sicheslav, a Ukrainian name that had nothing to do with Russian royalty. The details of this historical time are complex and challenging to follow for people who are not well-versed in the history of Ukraine, the Russian Empire, or the USSR.  A brief summary follows.

Just after the revolution of February 1917, Goldbrot writes in the Yizkor Book, Jews could suddenly hold political events “freely in public, with assemblies, congresses, lectures, books and recruiting new members: The General Zionists and Tzeirei Zion, the Bund, Poalei Zion, the Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party (“Seim”), the Popular Party “Volkspartei” and after some time the religious-national party Achdut (Unity).” 

Later in the year, however, the Ukrainian Movement took hold, and conditions grew more tenuous for the Jews, as there were anti-Jewish elements within the movement for an independent Ukraine. 

In the spring of 1918, the Ukranian Regime began while the city was occupied by Austrian forces, and Jews were largely treated fairly. 

However, 1919 was a difficult year, with civil war and an invasion. First, the Soviet Army entered Sicheslav and suspended all political assemblies. People lived in fear and scarcity. Within six months the White Army occupied the city under General Denkin, and conditions deteriorated quickly. In the Yizkor Book, Goldbrot writes:

As soon as Denikin's army reached town, while the soldiers were still marching festively on the main street, the Cossacks began robbing the shops. Soon they went to the Jewish homes, especially by night, taking all they could. They killed seldom, but rapes were common. In general, it was quiet during the day, it was possible to walk through the streets, the shops that have not been robbed were open – but the nights were horrible….  This situation lasted several weeks, and only after the robbing spread through the parts of the town where many Christians lived and several officers were bribed, the Cossacks were taken out of the town.

[During that time] several families left town, some to Odessa, some to Rostov, on the way to the Caucasus and some to Crimea, hoping to get a chance to leave the country and go abroad.

In the following years, as Communism took hold in Ukraine, Jewish communal public life was largely forced to cease. Additionally, the kinds of work that people could or couldn’t do shifted, and party leaders replaced professionals at workplaces. Goldbrot writes in the Yizkor Book:

In 1921, many residents began to leave Ekaterinoslav. The first were the refugees, who were allowed to return to their former homes: Lithuania, Poland or Belarus villages; many of the formerly wealthy people and public activists left as well. On the other hand, residents of the neighboring villages came to live in town, out of fear of the gangs and loss of livelihood sources. A small number of families emigrated and went to America or to Eretz Israel. 

In 1921 and 1922, famine and disease struck the region and took the lives of many, including Jews. More residents left. Jewish religious life was allowed to continue only in narrow, less public ways. Religious buildings, including the Choral Synagogue, were confiscated and repurposed by the state. The Jews of the city who stayed persisted.

The Early USSR Years

In 1922, when Ukraine became a Soviet Socialist Republic, the city was called both Sicheslav (Ukrainian) and Ekaterinoslav (Russian). By 1926, when the city’s name became Dnipropetrovs’k, the Jewish population had reduced significantly due to emigration. 

The 1930s are recorded as a relatively good decade for Yekaterinoslav’s Jewish community, which was welcome after all the strife. The city grew, and by 1939 an estimated 100,000 Jews lived in the city, comprising about one-fifth of the population.

World War II and the Holocaust in Dnipropetrovs’k

The Yizkor book for Ekaterinoslav contains a heart-rending history and first-person account of the Nazi occupation and Holocaust in Dnipropetrovs’k. It details what it was like for Jews of the city as Germany began to invade Ukraine, and eventually, occupy the city (26 August 1941–25 October 1943). The Nazi occupiers confined Jews to ghettos and exterminated them. More than half of the Jewish residents got out before the Nazis came, some evacuating to Uzbekistan or the Caucasus. Of those who stayed, just a handful survived. 

Dnipropetrovsk from 1944 to the Fall of the Soviet Union

As World War II drew to a close and as the Cold War began to emerge, USSR officials decided Dnipropetrovs’k would be an ideal city for military industrial design and production. With the exception of Jewish engineers, doctors, and higher-ranking government employees, Jews were largely not welcomed back to the city.  

In the 1950s, the Dnipropetrovsk Automobile Factory began the top-secret work of designing and constructing missiles for the military and engines for rockets. Due to this high-security work, the city was designated as a “closed city,” with no foreign visitors allowed beginning in 1959 (and not ending until Perestroika in 1987).

Jewish religious life suffered during this period, as did most religious life in the USSR. Many of Dnipropetrovsk’s Jews assimilated, and over the generations, they stopped speaking Yiddish. 

The Jews of Dnipro in an Increasingly Independent Ukraine

The article The Revival of the Dnipropetrovsk and Dnipro Jewish Community in Ukraine by Olena Ishchenko describes in detail the ways that Jewish life began to resurge in Dnipropetrovsk toward the end of the USSR and after its dissolution in 1991. The revival was intimately connected with the Chabad-Lubavitch branch of orthodox Judaism, as Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the “Lubavitcher Rebbe” grew up in the city while his father was Chief Rabbi there. 

Ishchenko’s 2022 article concludes: “In the last three decades the Dnipro Jewish community has become united and part of the oblast center’s urban community. Jews no longer must hide their nationality or religious preferences as they did in the USSR and have the tools, institutions, and resources to continue to preserve and develop their Jewish identity.”