Honouring Jewish Heritage and Fighting Anti-Semitism in Belarus

Eastern Europe is central to Jewish history, but the region today lacks Jewish heritage sites. Very few landmarks commemorate the millions of Jews exterminated there during WWII, or their role in local culture and society before the Holocaust. A new project, “Shtetl Routes: Vestiges of Jewish Cultural Heritage in Transborder Tourism”, aims to address this problem: by November 2015, tourist trails honouring the Jewish heritage of Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine will link the border regions of the three countries together.

Istočna Europa je centar židovske povijesti, ali danas tamo nedostaju mjesta sa  židovskom baštinom.  Malo  je područja koja komemoriraju  milijune Židova eksterminiranih u toku II. svjetskog rata ili  poštuju židovsku  ulogu u lokalnoj kulturi i društvu prije Holokausta. Novi projekt " Štetl ruta: Židovska kulturna baština u prekograničnom turizmu"  bavi se  tim problemom. Od studenog 2015. postojati  će "turistička tura" koja će pokazati  židovsko nasljeđe u Belorusiji, Poljskoj i Ukrajini i  povezati zajedno   granična područja te tri  zemlje. Tura će vjerojatno ići kroz grad Navahradak u Bjelorusiji, Slonim i Pinsk.

Potaknut od Brama Grodzka Kazališnog centra u Poljskoj, projekt će dobiti 400.000 Eura od Europske unije-  od programa prekogranične suradnje Poljska-Bjelorusija-Ukrajina 2007-2013.  Projekt će realizirati tri ture u graničnim područjima u svakoj zemlji , koje će biti i dio internacionalne ture. Projekt će promovirati lokalna arheološka  istraživanja i napraviti  vodič (Guidebook) na internetskom portalu o  povijesti Židova u tom području. Napraviti če 3-D vurtualni model pet  židovskih gradova ili "štetla" u svakoj od tih zemalja.

Postoji kontroverza za takav projekt,  jer se radi u području u kojem je razvijen antisemitizam. Prema popisu stanovništva u 2009,  Židova ima  samo  oko  0,1 građana Bjelorusije. No,  prema istraživanju 2008. " o Evropskim vrijednostima (EVS) " svaki peti Bjelorus je odgovorio da ne želi imati Židova kao  susjeda.

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....At the beginning of the 20th century, Jews amounted to over 30% of the Belarusian population. Some towns, such as Minsk, Pinsk, Mahiliou, Babrujsk, Homiel, were nearly 50% Jewish. Some of the most famous Belarusian Jews include artist Marc Chagall, composer Irving Berlin, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. In the 1920s, the Yiddish language even had the same status as Belarusian, Russian, and Polish in Soviet Belarus.

A few decades later, over 90% of the Belarusian Jewish populationwas exterminated in the Holocaust. Since 1989, most of the remaining Jews (over 57,000) have emigrated to Israel, bringing the Jewish population of Belarus down to 13,000, according to the 2009 census. Strikingly, anti-semitism in Belarus remains even in the absence of Jews.

The share of the Belarusian population negatively predisposed against Jews is far greater than in neighbouring Latvia (9%), Ukraine (11%), Russia (14%), or Poland (18%). Only Lithuanians, with 28% of respondents mentioning Jews as undesirable neighbours, proved to be more anti-Semitic in the 2008 EVS. The survey results suggest that anti-semitism is especially prevalent in small towns and rural areas,,,,,,