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Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Holds Roundtable within the “Jewish Heritage in Ukraine” Project

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Published on Monday, 01 June 2026 11:30

An international roundtable "Historical Memory: Representations of Ukrainian and Jewish Experience" was held at NaUKMA, organized by the Literary Heritage Research Group in the framework of a partnership project with UNESCO under the financial support from the European Union

The event brought together Ukrainian and renowned international scholars to discuss cultural memory, Ukrainian-Jewish relations, the impact of totalitarian narratives on the understanding of the past, and the role of literature and archives in preserving historical experience.

During the roundtable, presentations were made by Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba, researcher of Ukrainian–Jewish cultural relations and the history of modernism, Myroslav Skandrij, Professor of Literature and Jewish Studies at the University of California, San Diego, researcher of Ukrainian, Yiddish, and Jewish–Slavic literary interaction, Amelia Glaser, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, researcher of cultural memory, postmemory, and visual culture, Marianne Hirsch, and Professor of International Relations and History, researcher of Soviet history, mass violence, and memory politics in Eastern Europe, Olga Bertelsen.

Participants discussed issues related to the memory of the Holocaust and the Holodomor, features of Ukrainian and Jewish narratives about World War II, problems of silence surrounding traumatic experiences, and opportunities for reevaluating the past through interdisciplinary dialogue.

“When people ask us why so few ordinary Kyiv residents know about Bykivnia, I don’t have an answer. But it seems to me that this roundtable is one way to map out the landscapes of our memory,” noted Roman Veretelnyk, moderator of the discussion and the Head of the Volodymyr Morenets Department of Literary Studies.

Olha Poliukhovych, NaUKMA Vice President for Research and Academic Affairs, emphasized: “This roundtable is about the historical Ukrainian-Jewish relations, about shared memory, especially important during the times of war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine. We are still dealing with the work of Soviet propaganda against Ukrainians and Jews, which aimed to create and spread hostile narratives against each other.”

The discussion also involved Associate Professor of the Volodymyr Morenets Department of Literary Studies, Iryna Borysiuk, Associate Professor of the Volodymyr Morenets Department of Literary Studies, Rostyslav Semkiv, and other representatives of the NaUKMA academic community.

The roundtable became a space for open exchange of ideas about the complex pages of shared history and another step toward a deeper understanding of Ukraine's multicultural heritage.

The partnership project with NaUKMA "Jewish Heritage in Ukraine: Interdisciplinary Reflections Through the Lenses of Archival Documents, Culture, History and Literature" is part of broader efforts by UNESCO to preserve and digitize Ukraine's documentary heritage.

Photography: Oleksandra Glybovets