When Ukraine Was Re-Born Part II

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

  Golda Meir, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Mila Kunis and    Sholom Alechem were all born in Ukraine and are Jews

Ukraine was the site of early Slavic expansion, and enters history proper with the establishment of the medieval state of Kievan Rus', which emerged as a powerful nation in the Middle Ages but disintegrated by the mid-12th century. 

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, and Kazakhstan

Kiev was a Russian city, capital of Ukraine, founded in the 8th century, possibly by the Khazars, people that converted to Judaism.   Jewish merchants visited the town in the 9th and 20th centuries with the Jewish population growing there steadily, despite persecutions which started in 1113.  The community was destroyed by the Tartars in 1240. The Tatars is an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar". Initially, the ethnonym Tatar possibly referred to the Tatar confederation. That confederation was eventually incorporated into the Mongol Empire when Genghis Khan unified the various steppe tribes.                    

By the end of the 14th century, Jews were encouraged to return.  However, they were expulsed twice;  in 1495 (after Columbus sailed the ocean blue) and 1619, the year before Pilgrims took the Mayflower from Holland to America's Plymouth Rock.  

1362 – 1503
1362 – Kiev is conquered by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 1495 – Jews are exiled from Kiev as well as from all Lithuania. 
1503 – the decree of exile is revoked by Alexander Jagiellon; revival of the Jewish community.  

1654
Kiev becomes a part of the Tsardom of Muscovy; Jews are not allowed to settle in the city.

With the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in December 1991, Ukraine gained full independence. The country changed its official name to Ukraine, and it helped to found the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an association of countries that were formerly republics of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine had experienced a brief period of independence in 1918–20, but portions of western Ukraine were ruled by Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia in the period between the two World Wars, and Ukraine thereafter became part of the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (S.S.R.).   

Modern Town & Country	Other Names	c. 1950 After WWII Town / Country	c. 1930 Between Wars Town / District / Province / Country	c. 1900 Before WWI Town / District / Province / Country	# of JGFF Entries
Lviv, Ukraine 49°50' N 24°00' E 292 miles W of Kyyiv	L'viv [Ukr], Lwów [Pol], Lemberg [Ger], Lemberik [Yid], L'vov [Rus], Leopol [Lat]	L'vov Soviet Union	Lwów Lwów Lwów Poland	Lemberg Lwów Galicia

When Poland was reborn after WWI,  its leaders sought to regain the former pre-partition state borders. So, they aspired to acquire some of the areas from which the Ukrainians wanted to create their state. In 1918, it was impossible to delineate a clear border separating Poles from Ukrainians. The best example is the city of Lviv (earlier Lwów), where before the Second World War most of the inhabitants were Poles, but mainly Ukrainians lived in the surrounding villages.

   'Signing the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR,' by Stepan Dudnik

We all remember On December 30, 1922, these constituent republics established the U.S.S.R. Additional union republics (Soviet Socialist Republics) were set up in subsequent years: the Turkmen and Uzbek S.S.R.'s in 1924, the Tadzhik S.S.R. in 1929, and the Kazakh and Kirgiz S.S.R.'s in 1936.

               Lenin and Stalin

Interesting fact: In 1922, Stalin was a People’s Commissar (de facto, minister) for Nationalities of the Russian Republic. And it was he who, together with Lenin, on November 3, 1917, signed the ‘Declaration of the Rights for the Peoples of Russia’ that particularly said: “The right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, even to the point of separation and the formation of an independent state.” Now, Stalin was going for quite the opposite.

When the Soviet Union began to unravel in 1990–91, the legislature of the Ukrainian S.S.R. declared sovereignty (July 16, 1990) and then outright independence (August 24, 1991), a move that was confirmed by popular approval in a plebiscite (December 1, 1991). 

Back during the 14th and 15th centuries, present-day Ukrainian territories came under the rule of three external powers: the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland (which later constituted the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and then the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth).                   

     Golden Horde, also called Kipchak Khanate, Russian designation for the Ulus Juchi, the western part of the Mongol empire, which flourished from the mid-13th century to the end of the 14th century. The people of the Golden Horde were a mixture of Turks and Mongols, with the latter generally constituting the aristocracy.  (Our Jewish males'DNA tests on QBZ67 haplogroup -like my father-origin,  was said to be from Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey).   

     The Crimean Khanate officially the Great Horde and Desht-i Kipchak and in old European historiography and geography known as Little Tartary. (Latin: Tartaria ...

This all became the Pale of Settlement created by Catherine the Great of Russia.  The Pale consisted of 25 provinces of Czarist Russia (in Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia, and Crimea) where Jews were permitted permanent residence.  This was instituted in 1791 by decree of Catherine.  Borders were arbitrarily restricted to Jews from time to time.  They were penned in. No wonder that Jews find relatives from Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine and wonder in which they were born.  

Russia's Putin has to dig way back to Kievan Rus' in the Middle Ages to have a claim on Ukraine, and then it wasn't for very long.  

David Livingston / Getty ImagesIn case you weren’t aware, Mila, American actress, was born in Ukraine before moving to the US as a child. And so, after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of her home country in late February, Mila and her husband, Ashton, have been raising their voices — and funds — to support those in need.  Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have always been vocal when it comes to issues close to their hearts, and now, with Mila’s native Ukraine currently under attack, the couple is speaking out more than ever.  For one, they are reminding their children that they are half Ukrainian. 

 On March 3, Mila and Ashton announced a fundraising goal of $30 million to help Ukrainians affected by the war, donating $3 million of their own money to the cause. Within 48 hours, the couple hit a halfway point and ultimately reached their goal on March 17, after over 65,000 donations.

As an aside, Kutcher grew up as a Roman Catholic. As an adult, he practices Kabbalah, and has visited Israel and studied the Torah; his wife Mila Kunis stated that he "taught [me] everything I never knew" about her religion, Judaism, though as of 2018, he has not converted. On trips to Israel, Kutcher visited Kabbalah centers in Tel Aviv and in Tsfat. In 2013, Kutcher remarked, "Israel is near and dear to my heart ... coming to Israel is sort of coming back to the source of creation – trying to get closer to that. And as a creative person, going to the source of creation is really inspiring. And this place has been really inspiring for me – not only on a spiritual level, but also on an artistic and creative level."

Resource:

https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/learning-environment/babi-yar/historical-background2.html

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/16-jews-from-ukraine-who-changed-the-world/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Khanate

https://www.britannica.com/place/Golden-Horde

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ukraine

https://warsawinstitute.org/poland-ukraine-history-divides/

https://www.britannica.com/place/Soviet-Union

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine

Ukrainian Calling Mila Kunis Anti-Semite Names

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

Ukraine has a long history of being anti-Semitic.  It was part of Catherine II's "Pale of Settlement" where she ALLOWED Jews to live, and in this way kept them out of Russia proper. The Settlement was made up of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine and Belarus.  Kiev in Ukraine was a big Jewish center, but not known for orthodoxy.  

Ukraine has many parties in its parliament, one of which, is the Swodoba party.  Swoboda Parliamentarian, Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn, has quoted Third Reich (Nazi) leaders such as Joseph Goebbels, Gregor Strasser and Ernst Rohm in his political speeches.  The deputy chief of Swoboda, Ihor Miroshnychenko, has called the Ukrainian-born actress, Mila Kunis, a dirty Jewess."  So you know right away what I think of this party.  
                                                                              

"Kunis was born in Chernivtsi, in the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine).Her mother, Elvira, is a physics teacher who runs a pharmacy, and her father, Mark Kunis, is a mechanical engineer who works as a cab driver. Kunis has an elder brother named Michael (born c. 1976). She stated in 2011 that her parents had "amazing jobs", and that the family was "very lucky" and "not poor"; they had decided to leave the USSR because they saw "no future" there for Kunis and her brother. In 1991, when she was seven years old, her family moved to Los Angeles, California with $250. "That was all we were allowed to take with us. My parents had given up good jobs and degrees, which were not transferable. We arrived in New York on a Wednesday and by Friday morning my brother and I were at school in LA."

Anti-Semitism is growing fast with Nazi symbols being the new normal.  The 70,000 Jews who live there are very upset and worried.  

Kunis is Jewish and has cited antisemitism in the former Soviet Union as one of several reasons for her family's move to the United States. She has stated that her parents "raised [her] Jewish as much as they could," although religion was suppressed in the Soviet Union.  She is currently dating Ashton Kutcher.  

In 2008 she had her first break in films and played Rachel Jansen in forgetting Sarah Marshall.  She has been in many more films.  When she performed as Lily in Black Swan, she gained worldwide attention.  The Premio Marcello Mastroianni award for the best young actress or actor was hers at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.  She was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress and had the screen actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by a female in a supporting role.  So Mila is internationally well known.  But to the prejudiced Ukrainian, she remains a dirty Jew.  Anti-Semitism is hard to scrub out of some people's minds.  I think it's he who needs some soap and water as he has just now dirtied the waters of the Ukrainians who agree with him.  

Resource:  http://spitfirelist.com/news/the-ideology-and-electoral-gravitas-of-swoboda-ukrainian-heirs-to-the-ounb/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_Kunis
http://www.globalresearch.ca/democratization-and-anti-semitism-in-ukraine-neo-nazi-symbols-become-the-new-normal/5371919

Mila Kunis, Actress: Victim of Anti-Semitism in Ukraine:

                                                                    Mila Kunis
Nadene Goldfoot
A Ukrainian-American actress, Mila Kunis, formerly Milena Markovna Kunis, is  Jewish.. She was born in Chernivtsi in the Ukrainian SSR.  All Jews were forced to live in the Pale of Settlement of which Ukraine was a part from 1791 to 1917. She lost many relatives in the Holocaust when 900,000 Jews were murdered in Ukraine by the Nazis.   Mila was recently slammed by the far-right Svoboda Party member of the Ukrainian Parliament proclaiming that she wasn't "Ukrainian but a zhydovka," (Jew).   (from Yid you get Zid-Zyyd or Jew).  He is saying that Jews were not considered Ukrainians when 1/3 of  Ukrainians before WWII were Jews.

Natan Sharansky was a Ukranian Jew who was a Soviet refusenik and was jailed because he wanted to leave the country for Israel, and then called a spy,  He had even tried to learn to read Hebrew.  My Hebrew teacher was sending him lessons on the sly from Israel.  He became a Human Rights activist, author and member of the Knesset in Israel.  Born as Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky in Stalino, Soviet Union in 1948, the city's name was later changed to Donetsk which is in Ukraine.  He was a child chess prodigy and became a mathematician.  .

 One of Kiev's city gates is called the Judaic Gate.  Jews immigrated to the Ukraine in waves from Khazaria, the Caliphate and Byzantium between the 9th and 12th centuries and from Central Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, and then from Poland in the 16th century.  The Russian government encouraged Jewish agricultural settlement in southern Ukraine from 1804-59 so that by 1897 there were 21 Jewish colonies in the Kherson province and 16 in Yekaterinoslav with 26,326 people.  In the 1920's the Soviet government promoted Jewish settlement in the Ukraine with funds from the American Joint Distribution Committee in the regions of Kalinindorf, Zlatopol and Stalindorf, a time my cousin's family immigrated to the states from Ukraine.

 By 1930 there were 90,000 Jewish agriculturists there.  Jewish economy and culture suffered under Soviet rule of Communism.  About half of Soviet Russia's 3 million Jews lived in Ukraine before WWII under Nazi rule.  If they hadn't fled to Russia they were wiped out by the Germans and Ukrainians in 1941-1942.  By 1970 the Jewish population was 777,126.  In 1989 it was 484,129.  They weren't allowed to leave and go to Israel. Today Ukraine has the 3rd largest Jewish population in Europe and it is the 5th largest group in the world.  Kiev has 110,000 Jews of an aging population with a medium of age 45.

"Zhydovka " is said as a deeply hurtful slur which is what his party members are known for doing, regularly injecting anti-Semitism into their speeches and public pronouncements.  It should be easy to do since the Ukraine was a part of the Pale of Settlement where Jews had to live.  They were isolated this way from the rest of Russia.

"Under Nikita Khrushchev’s rule over Ukraine, Ukrainian Jews who fled to Soviet Asia during the occupation slowly returned to reclaim their homes, possessions and jobs. The Ukrainians who remained in the communities were hostile to the returning Jews. The government, once again, refused to interfere in the conflicts between the Russians and the Jews. It seems to be a constant hotbed of anti-Semitism in Ukraine.

As Russia seems to have backed Hezbollah terrorists who are in Lebanon, Russians in Ukraine are seen to be part of a trend of spewing out anti-Semitic messages and inciting violence seen in the past.  Take the Svododa party who gained over 10% of the national vote.  Their campaigning was one of injecting fear into their society.  They warned that foreigners and minorities are going to take over the country and they sounded like repeating Nazi propaganda of Joseph Goebbels.  The people mistrust the Jews of all the people they could distrust the most.  The odd fact is that in the early 1900's, many Russian Jews immigrated from the Pale of Settlement to the USA.  Then the Nazis in WWII did away with most in the Holocaust.  That there were any Jews left in Ukraine is a surprise to me!  And these few left are the minorities that are going to take over the country?  The Ukrainians should be so lucky!

Mila came to Los Angeles with her family at age 7 in 1991 from Ukraine  Her family moved because of anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union.  Her parents said they saw no future there for her or her older brother.  Her parents raised her as a Jew as much as they could being religion of any sort was suppressed in the Soviet Union. They came with only $250, which was all they were allowed to take out.  Her parents gave up good jobs and degrees which were not transferable.  Today her parents have "amazing" jobs and they are very lucky and not poor.

 As an after-school activity, her parents enrolled her in acting classes and she was soon discovered by an agent.  Before she knew it she was appearing in several TV series and commercials.  Her first significant role came before her 15th birthday, playing Jackie Burkhart on the TV series, "That '0's Show."  A year later she was cast as the voice of Meg Griffin on the animated series "Family Guy."

After that she has been in many films such as "The Book of Eli, and Black Swan where she played the part of Lily.  She's received the nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an award for Outstanding Performance by a female actor in a supporting role.

As for romance, when she was 18 she went with actor Macaulay Culkin that lasted for 8 years.  Of course, I hope that she finds a nice Jewish boy and has a family.   .  She is a beautiful young lady and is part of the American Democratic Party.  Even her native country, Ukraine has heard of Mila.  Such anti-Semitism developing there again should remind us that our world has shrunk and is intertwined.  What goes on in Ukraine affects Jews in other places.  Have we had dreams of having a more tolerant and peaceful international community? People slip into their old ways of needing a scapegoat and always pick on the Jews.

Resource: http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/06/first-they-came-for-mila-kunis/ from Oleksandr Feldman, President of the Ukrainian Jewish committee and member of Parliament of Ukraine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_Kunis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Ukraine
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/communities/show/id/91
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/ukraine.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4298796/Mila-Kunis-reveals-her-secret-past-as-a-Jew-living-in-Ukraine-from-where-she-fled-to-escape-hatred.html