Before the Second World War, Jews made 40% of the population in some Ukrainian cities. The Nazis, helped by local militia, wiped out Jewish life with mass execution or with transfer to concentration camps. Only those who ran away to Russia, did come back. Today a estimated 200.000 Jews thrive in Ukraine.
Nowhere is their presence more visible than in the city of Dnipropetrovk where a 20-story Menorah Jewish Center has been built by the Lubavitch Rabbi Samuel Kamenetsky with the help of two Ukrainian Jewish oligarchs.
Hassidic Judaism originated in Ukraine. Every Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, some 30.000 Jews, not all Hassids, come on pilgrimage from Israel, Europe and the USA on the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in the city of Uman. They believe the Rabbi will intervene with God to have their sins wiped out : “The Rabbi, is my best lawyer” says a pilgrim. For four days, the pilgrims pray, chant, dance, partake food and make merry in the streets of this small town.