THE JEWISH THING rang out again...
The village of Gvardiyskoye, Khmelnytskyi district, was once a typical Jewish settlement. One hundred years ago, three and a half thousand people lived in Felstyna (as it was called then), of which almost two thousand were Jews. A Jewish village council, Jewish schools and synagogues worked there. But in 1919, a Jewish pogrom took place in the town, which killed 600 people, and then the Holocaust. Jewish schools and synagogues were closed. The Jews began to leave the troubled place.
In the old days, local Jews greeted everyone differently than we are used to. Meeting on the streets, they said: you are lucky. There is not a single Jew left in Gvardiyskyi, there is no one to greet Ukrainians and Poles in Hebrew with the flowery expression "Nate vam schachtie". But the interest of the villagers in the culture of their old neighbors did not end. The rector of the Roman Catholic parish, Fr. Petro Hluvka, who made a large study about the pogrom in Felshtyn, and the director of the local gymnasium Yuriy Fedorov (together they are doing a great job of preserving the historical heritage in the village) asked us to hold a Jewish concert, and we gladly responded to this offer.
This concert became a kind of history lesson - the history of the hometown, only without grades and with a wonderful mood. Just like a hundred years ago, a Jewish speech sounded in the village. With the difference that not on the streets and not in synagogues, but in songs performed in Yiddish and Hebrew.
We got a very grateful audience. She warmly and cordially greeted our artists with thunderous applause: the artistic director of the Khmelnytskyi charitable foundation "Hesed Besht" Anatoliy Muzyuk, a volunteer of the foundation Kira Nanba, the teacher of the Khmelnytskyi Humanitarian and Pedagogical Academy Alexey Radetsky and the folk amateur team from among the students of the same academy. The concert lasted an hour and a half, but the audience did not get tired and parted unwillingly. For us, this is the best compliment.
