Nadene Goldfoot
My paternal grandparents were from Lithuania. Why is it that so many DNA related people have been from Ukraine? What went on in history that so many came from there? Battles, fighting and wars affected the population movement. Ukraine's fights affected the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Jews immigrated to the Ukraine in waves from Khazaria, the Caliphate, and Byzantium between the 5th and 12th centuries. Then they came from Central Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Jews went to Khazaria from other lands that were infested with anti-Semitism. The original people there were a Turkish or Finnish tribe which had settled in the lower Volga region. Russians called them the White Ugrians, and they had converted to Judaism. They were powerful from the 8th to 10th centuries, reaching Kiev. Their Royal House intermarried with the Byzantium people. From 786 to 809 their King Bulan and 4,000 of his nobles converted to Judaism.
Severe massacres occurred there during the Chmielnicki and Haidamak uprising of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukraine known as Khmelʹnychchyna also known as the Cossack-Polish War, the Chmielnicki Uprising, the Khmelnytsky massacre or the Khmelnytsky insurrection, was a Cossack rebellion that took place between 1648 and 1657 in the eastern territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which led to the creation of a Cossack Hetmanate in Ukraine.
"In Jewish history, the Uprising is known for the concomitant outrages against the Jews who, in their capacity as leaseholders (arendators), were seen by the peasants as their immediate oppressors. However, Shmuel Ettinger argues that both Ukrainian and Polish accounts of the massacres overemphasize the importance of the Jewish role as landlords, while downplaying the religious motivation for Cossack violence" In other words, they used a double-edged sword against the Jews.
Within a few months almost all Polish nobles, officials and Catholic priests had been wiped out or driven from the lands of present-day Ukraine. The Commonwealth population losses in the uprising exceeded one million. In addition, Jews suffered substantial losses because they were the most numerous and accessible representatives of the szlachta regime.
The Frankist and Hasidic movements originated in the 18th century in the Ukraine which was also closely associated with the early development of Zionism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In the 19th century, the main influences were from Galicia and white Russia. Always an anti-Semitic center, the Ukraine was the scene of pogroms in 1905 and 1918-20. Possibly the movie, Fiddler on the Roof, was supposed to have happened in Ukraine.
The Russian government encouraged Jewish agricultural settlement in southern Ukraine from 1804 to 1859, so that by 1897, there were 21 Jewish colonies in Kherson Province and 16 in Yekaterinoslav with 26,326 population.
The Soviet government in the 1920's promoted Jewish settlement in the Ukraine with funds from the American Joint Distribution Committee in the regions of Kalinindorf, Zlotopol, and Stalindorf. In 1930, there were 90,000 Jewish agriculturists there.
In January 1918, a regime of national autonomy was established in the Ukraine and the following served as ministers for Jewish affairs: M. Silberfarb in 1918, A. Revutzki and W. Latzki in 1919, and P. Krasny in 1920.
Jewish economy and culture suffered under Soviet rule. About half of Soviet Russia's 3 million Jews lived there before World War II, but under Nazi rule, the Jewish inhabitants who had not fled to Russia were wiped out by by the Germans and Ukrainians from 1941 to 1942.
The Jewish population was officially put at 777,126 in 1970 and at 484,129 in 1989. The Jewish Confederation of Ukraine is an association of Ukrainian public organizations founded in 1999. The Confederation unites independent social, charitable and religious Jewish organizations in Ukraine.
The president of Ukraine today is Jewish. He is Volodymyr Zelensky. Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky is a Ukrainian comedian and politician who is the 6th and current president of Ukraine since 20 May 2019. He's 5'7" tall. He's been president since May 20, 2019.
Zelensky was born 25 January 1978 in Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union to Jewish parents. His grandfather, Semyon (Simon) Ivanovych Zelensky, served in the Red Army (in the 57th Guards Motor Rifle Division) during World War II; Semyon's father and three brothers were killed in the Holocaust. Volodymyr's father, Oleksandr Zelensky, is a professor and head of Department of Cybernetics and Computing Hardware at the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics; his mother, Rymma Zelenska, used to work as an engineer. Prior to starting elementary school, he lived for four years in Mongolia in the city of Erdenet where his father worked. At age 16, he passed the TOEFL and received an education grant to study in Israel, but his father did not allow him to study there
- The latest population estimate for Ukraine is 42,800,000.
- As of 1 January 2016, the core Jewish population of Ukrainians was estimated to be 56,000 (0.13% of the wider population) and the enlarged Jewish population was estimated at 140,000.
- An estimated 200,000 Ukrainians qualify for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.
- The largest Jewish population centres in Ukraine are Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Odessa.
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