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Eastern Europe’s Largest Holocaust Museum Unveiled

by Mordechai Lightstone – Lubavitch.com

In advance of the grand opening of the Menorah Jewish Community Center and Holocaust Museum in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine on October 21, some 300 guests and dignitaries attended a preview of the center’s museum Monday, October 16. Rabbi Shlomo Amar, Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Mr. Lev Leviev, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the CIS, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, of Lubavitch World Headquarters and Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein presided.

The seven-tower, twenty-story museum and center multiplex, built at an estimated $60 million, was spearheaded by Ukrainian businessmen and philanthropists Gennady Bogolubov, President of the Jewish Community of Dnepropetrovsk, and Igor Kolomoyskyi, President of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, European Jewish Union, and a member of the Supervisory Board of Dnepropetrovsk Jewish Community. The two men are partners in the international industrial firm Privat Group.

Kolomoyskyi, who funded the museum component of the multiplex, the largest in Eastern Europe, was personally involved in selecting many of the works on display.

The opening exhibition, “Wanderings of the Children of Israel,” and will illuminate the story of the Jewish Diaspora in Ukraine by artists from Ukraine, Germany and Israel.

According to museum organizer and curator Marina Shelest, the exhibition’s theme of Jewish wandering is essential to the story of its featured artists.

“Wanderings, voluntary or forced, are the biography of every Jew, and the artists that are represented in this show are no exception.”

While the center will help fill the spiritual and physical needs of Dnepropetrovsk’s 50,000 Jews and the broader Jewish community of the FSU, the Holocaust will serve as an important educational medium, teaching visitors about the region’s Jewish history.

In a 2008 interview with Lubavitch.com, Zelig Brez, executive director of the Jewish Community of Dnepropetrovsk, expressed his excitement for the role the museum will play for the entire population of Dnepropetrovsk. “The [museum] … plays an important role in the development of the entire city. Today’s generation [of Ukrainians] has a very limited understanding of the Holocaust, and we must change that.”

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11 Comments

  • Zalman K

    Why is Genady Bogulubov not seen with his personal Londin Rabbi Mendel Kalminson, and instead with the Yoga master Pinson

  • Chaim from CH

    not nice to speak about rabbi dovber pinson this way, a huge tamlmid chachom, mechaber sefarim, and the personal teacher of bogolubov. If you are related to rabbi kalminson, why dont you ask him what rabbi pinson has done positive in london -where he goes once a month and how much he helped kalmanson

  • Klman

    to 7:

    Talmid Chochom?!

    Did you read his latest book on na’anuyim? It looks like some child’s collection of kabbalistic concepts without any sense.

  • Chaim

    To 8
    really? i wonder why then rav morgenstern, the kasever rebbe, rav amar, and others gave him such beautiful haskomas, calling him ‘a goan and mekubal’

  • moshe

    to number 9

    it simply looks like you are either a very jealous person or simply such an am ha’aretz that you cannot understand something a little deeper – even as a bachur dovber pinson was known as a Goan, finished shas at 18, and was the Kan of Oheli Torah together with reb mordechai farkash