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The Khmelnytsky Charitable Foundation "Hesed Besht" conducts cultural, mass and educational work in the field of studying one of the most terrible tragedies of the 20th century, which was widely known as the "Holocaust". An effective method of work is to conduct educational seminars for young people. The "Ark" project belongs to such initiatives, as it is carried out for young people of different ages and nationalities. On March 23 and 24, the Foundation implemented this year's "Ark" program called "Children and the Holocaust" with the assistance of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee "Joint", the Yiddish Institute (Vilnius, Lithuania) and the Anne Frank Foundation (Amsterdam, Kingdom of the Netherlands).
The Ark Project is an ongoing project of the Hesed Besht Children’s Foundation, aimed at fostering tolerance, international cooperation, and cultural integration. Over the years, the project has taken different forms, but the main goal has always remained the same. In 2017, our organization won a grant application from the Anne Frank Foundation to conduct the Children and the Holocaust seminar program as part of the Ark International Youth Project. With the support of our partners, namely the Institute of Judaica and the Yiddish Institute, at the end of March, in the Khmelnytskyi region, we again talked about the innocent victims of the Holocaust, the tragic fate of children during the tragedy, considered the symbol of Anne Frank, and provided volunteer assistance in cleaning the graves of our former Jewish compatriots.
On March 23, speakers of the “Ark” project arrived in Khmelnytskyi: Director of the Institute of Judaica Yulia Smilyanska and lecturer of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Tetyana Batanova. During the day, at the “Thia” Community Center, they gave lectures on Judaica, history and culturology of the Jewish people for both project participants and many interested parties, including local historians and cultural workers, employees of the Khmelnytskyi Humanitarian Foundation “Hesed Besht” and simply people who are interested in this information. As for the project participants, they were future teachers of junior grades, and now they are students of the Khmelnytskyi Humanitarian and Pedagogical Academy. The students were accompanied by their teachers: Sofia Paziy, Liliya Onufriychuk and Natalia Miskova.
The central figure of the discussions, of course, was Anne Frank - a girl who changed our idea of the feelings of a person who expects death at the hands of punishers. Of the 6 million dead, about 2 were children. And in our region, next to the graves of adults, mounds of children's graves rise. The Manager of the Hesed Besht Charity Foundation and the author of the Ark project, Lyudmila Shvartsman, told about all this. On the first day, the participants visited the memorial to the executed ghetto in the city of Proskurov, where they put a lot of effort into cleaning it. It is pleasant to note that the young people did their volunteer work not just casually, but conscientiously and with a deep understanding of the cause they undertook. This indicates that current generations do not forget the past and care about preserving the memory of our ancestors.
The next day, March 24, the seminar participants visited graves in the towns of Dunaivka and Kamianets-Podilskyi. The Dunaivka phosphate mine became tragically famous after the occupiers imprisoned several thousand Jews there, leading to their deaths. Now it is quiet and peaceful here, and only memorial plaques and flowers remind of that terrible tragedy. In Kamianets-Podilskyi, the participants visited local graves, including a large children's grave, where they also made their volunteer efforts. After that, everyone gathered at the local Community Center, where they learned about the history and present of the Jewish community from its head, Margarita Shopnik. The Foundation's clients and local workers in the cultural and educational spheres also came to meet the project participants. In keeping with Jewish hospitality and partner assistance, the participants were treated to lunch.
We hope that the “Ark” project and the “Children and the Holocaust” seminar will not remain lost in time: the attitude of modern youth to the tragedy of almost a century ago is extremely heartfelt and understanding. Especially when it comes to those people who will teach and educate new generations of our society in the future. Therefore, the Hesed Besht Children’s Charity Foundation and all partner organizations are involved in educational activities so that the Holocaust will never happen again in any country and with any nationality.
