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Introduction
Jews in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe
The twentieth century brought monumental changes and unprecedented challenges to the East-European Jewry. Its story is told here in the voices of six Jewish women, whose lives were marked by its turbulent course.
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Karazin University’s Dormitory No. 9
The campus of the V. N. Karazin National University in Kharkiv consists of eight dormitories housing more than 5,000 students and postgraduates. Dormitory No. 9 is a 9-storey building. It features laundry facilities and a fitness room, and there is WIFI in every room.
The dormitory, at 51 Ludvík Svoboda Avenue, mainly houses students of the Faculty of Mathe-matics and Informatics, the Faculty of History, and the Faculty of Philology.
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Kharkiv Forest Park (Lisopark)
Kharkiv Forest Park is considered the largest of its kind in Ukraine and one of the country’s crown-ing jewels in terms of natural beauty. Old oaks, lindens, maples, spruces, and pines grow here.
In addition to the rich flora and fauna, the park offers numerous recreational facilities and a chil-dren's railroad, the Little Southern Railway, which was inaugurated in 1940.
There are also a number of monuments in the park. In 2000, a Ukrainian-Polish memorial was erected here to commemorate the victims of totalitarianism. The monument features columns with the names of Soviet citizens and Polish soldiers who were shot by the NKVD in the years 1938-1940 and interred in mass graves in the forest park. According to various sources, more than 10000 victims lie buried here. The memorial site Memorial'nyj kompleks Slavy (Memorial Complex of Glory) from 1977 is one of the key sites of remembrance of the Second World War in Kharkiv. This place is dedicated to the Soviet soldiers and civil-ians who died during the Second World War.
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Kharkiv Tractor Plant
The "Kharkiv Tractor Plant" (ChTS) is the largest tractor manufacturer in Ukraine. The first tractor rolled off the production line on October 1, 1931, which is why this day is considered the plant's birthday. As more and more specialists in various fields were needed to work in the huge and rapidly growing company, a new residential area was established in Kharkiv to house them. It was given the name ChTS after the plant. Over the years, the plant has produced more than 3 million tractors and other specialized heavy machines. For decades, the products manufactured by ChTS were sold on a large scale in the Soviet Union and in many countries in Europe, Asia and even Africa. Built in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the district of Novy Kharkiv, designed as a so-called Sozgorod, is situated around the Kharkiv tractor factory.
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Background article
Kharkiv–a Metropolis at War
The initiators of the interview project stayed in Kharkiv during the continuous attacks. Iryna Skyrda, a member of Young Kharkiv, talks about what was special about the city and how it changed as a result of the war.
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Memorials in Wrocław
The Jewish community in Breslau, which was the third-largest in the German Reich in 1925, was forgotten for many years. However, after 1989, new interest in local history began to emerge in Wrocław, Poland. Nowadays, monuments and a commemorative procession serve as reminders of the Jewish people who lived in Breslau (the pre-1945 German name for Wrocław) during the pre-war period.
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Cooking recipe
Mini-Napoleons
Every recipe tells a story – be it that of one’s own family, social group, region, of nation states or whole empires. A particular dish is thus always both a symbol and an expression of cultural concepts. A recipe booklet compiled by students at the University of Bamberg looks at “Culinary Forays Into Eastern Europe” (Kulinarische Streifzüge durch das östliche Europa) and brings together a series of recipes of cultural and historical interest. Below is an especially delicious sample.
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North Saltivka
North Saltivka, a district in the north-east of Kharkiv, is one of the newest parts of the city. Most of the urban structures and features we see today were built between 1987 and 1993. The district is characterized by 9, 12, or 16-storeyed prefabricated buildings, as well as several schools, kindergartens, and two polyclinics.
After February 24, 2022, North Saltivka was systematically bombed by Russia, resulting in catastrophic destruction. It is estimated that 70% of the buildings in the area were damaged or destroyed. Until February 24, 2022, almost 200,000 people lived in this area, today (as of July 2023) only about a thousand remain.
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Introduction
Oral History Interviews in War-time
What does it mean to interview people when there is a war going on? Yevhenii Telukha describes the difficult circumstances under which the interviews were produced.
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Pechenihy Reservoir, Staryi Saltiv
The Pechenihy Reservoir and the adjoining village of Staryi Saltiv are located about 50 kilometers from Kharkiv and form one of its recreational areas. The Pechenihy Reservoir was created between 1958 and 1962 on the Siverkyi Donets River. It is the main source of water supply for Kharkiv and agriculture east of the city.
In the first weeks of the war, the Ukrainian armed forces blew up the bridge on the dam over the Siverkyi Donets in Staryi Saltiv to make it more difficult for the invading Russian forces to reach Kharkiv. On September 20, 2022, as a result of numerous attacks by the Russian military, the upper sluice of the Pechenihy Dam in the Kharkiv region and part of the bridge were destroyed, severing the connection between Kharkiv and the municipality of Vovchansk.
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Background article
Post-War Jewish Migration from the USSR and the refuseniki movement
The post-WW II Jewish migration from the Soviet Union (and also after its dissolution) is one of the largest in modern history. Altogether 2.75 million Soviet Jews left the USSR for Israel, the United States, Germany and elsewhere. The position of the Soviet state with respect to emigration was remarkably ambivalent: in some cases, it was allowed and even encouraged, in others, others; it was controlled and strongly limited. The Jewish emigration movement that arose in the late 1960s and continued throughout the 1970s-1980s became an example of resistance and activism within the authoritarian system, which increasingly alerted international attention. In one way or another, it affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and changed the appearance of many cities and towns within the Soviet Union and outside it.
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Return and Redemption
This text highlights the diverse landscape of Hasidism and contemporary Hasidic pilgrimage in Poland and Ukraine.
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Ruthenia quasi est alter orbis
"Rus' is almost another world" wrote the Krakow bishop Maciej around 1150. What was the basis of this differentiation? How powerful was it and how did it play out in reality? In search of answers, this article also discusses the dimensions and ambivalences of border demarcations.
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Biography
Samuel Fränkel
The Berlin Jew Samuel Fränkel (1773-1833) settled in Warsaw in 1798 as a representative of a large bank. Within a few years and across numerous political breaks, Fränkel rose to become the most important banker in a divided Poland. In doing so, Fränkel always successfully drew on his transnational connections to Jews and non-Jews in Prussia, Austria and Russia.
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Sarzhyn Yar
Sarzhyn Yar is a 12 km-long gorge to the north of Kharkiv, which is known for its mineral water spring. The most distinguishing landmark of Sarzhyn Yar is a futuristic concrete pavilion on three pillars, which was designed by the architect V. S. Vasiliev and built in the 1960s.
In 2018, the Sarzhyn Yar recreation area from the embankment to the mineral water spring was restored. Seven ponds were created on three different levels, and a children's playground, a sports field, a park landscape, and a new staircase to the "Botanical Garden" metro station were built. The canopy over the spring was also reconstructed and the pumping stations and fountains repaired.
On August 30, 2022, shells hit one of the buildings of Sarzhyn Yar, killing a woman who had come to the spring to fetch water.
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Editorial
Spaces - Borders - Projections
Since the beginning of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, questions around spaces and borders have increasingly appeared on the agenda of Eastern European studies. The contributions to the Copernico Portal’s newest area of focus demonstrate the important role played by space and border-related debates and the processes of appropriation and reinterpretation associated with them.
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Background article
The History of the German-speaking Volhynians as Part of a Global Migration History
From the mid-nineteenth century onward, innovations such as steam navigation and the advent of the railroad led to a sharp increase in global migration movements. The German-speaking Volhynians were part of this development, which moved between the ideal-typical poles of voluntary and forced migration and was significantly influenced by the enforcement of the ethnonational principle. This article focuses on the emigration movements of this group from the Russian governorate of Volhynia in the period between the 1860s and the First World War. The subsequent forced migrations of the German-speaking Volhynians are also briefly discussed.
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Introduction
The National Opera in Central and Eastern Europe
Today it is the passion of a select few music lovers – but in the 19th century, opera was a major social event, an expression of national consciousness, or even the musical declaration of national independence. But how did this happen? What role does the national opera play in Eastern Europe? And what makes an opera a national opera?
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Editorial
The Sounds of Bukovina
A region with many voices: The cultural diversity of Bukovina is particularly evident in its little-known music and singing culture – past and present. Twelve musical contributions provide an insight into the musical history of a multifaceted landscape on the northeastern edge of the Carpathians.
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The Uprooted Ones – Lemkos in Galicia and abroad
The small, private Museum of Lemko Culture in Zyndranowa is situated on the far periphery of southeastern Poland, yet it is a destination for many travelers, mainly from western and northern Poland, but also from other parts of the country and from abroad. For many, a visit here is connected with questions of identity and with the search for traces of family history. At the open-air museum, visitors can experience, among other things, the farm of the Gocz family and learn a great deal about the life of the villagers.
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