In October 2012, I visited Kosiv with a friend, a former shtetl in Galicia – a popular craft market had lured us there. We found no Ukrainian kilim, but we discovered the Jewish cemetery. Back in Germany, Kosiv crosses my way unexpectedly again. Locations can follow you.
We can complain or we can take action. SVIT Ukraine helps since 5 years to rescue one of the most important spots of Jewish heritage in Eastern Europe: The Jewish cemetery of Chernivtsi – former Czernowitz. You can be part of it!
August 2012. I’ve been wanting for a long time to visit Vizhnitz – Vyzhnytsia in Ukrainian. Maybe because it was the equivalent of the middle-class and assimilated Chernivtsi (Czernowitz) Jewery once. Vizhnitz was a stronghold of Hasidism, of Jewish mysticism and Judaism for the poor. Can you still feel some of it today? Yes, if you manage to find the Jewish cemetery.
Chernivtsi, former Czernowitz, in western Ukraine in August 2012. For the last five years, volunteer organizations have been engaged in the maintenance of the Jewish cemetery. Young people from the whole world remove vines and undergrowth in an attempt to make the cemetery accessible each summer. It is hard physical work but it is possible to learn and experience much.
Vanished World 