A Visit To Zashkov

As reported by the Greenberg's to Jerome Hoffman documenting their 2012 trip.

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My husband and I just returned from a fantastic trip to Ukraine.  I wanted to let you know about our visit to Zashkov, which was one of the highlights of our trip. Our guide arranged for us to be met in the town by the Jewish community’s contact person – ironically a non-Jewish woman.  She took us to the Zashkov Museum,
where we spent about an hour talking to the curator.  I found it amazing that a town of fewer than 2,000 actually has a museum. 

The interior shows an exhibit of typical household items from the early 1900s. 

The curator (third photo) is shown with our guide on the left and the community contact person on the right.  They are looking at the map you sent me that was drawn by Sam Sandler.  The curator confirmed that a number of the sites on the map still exist at the locations shown on the map.  In the background of this photo on the left side is an exhibit about a Philadelphia Zashkover named Kramer. 

One of the most remarkable parts of our visit was when the curator told us that the museum was given a Jewish artifact that he thinks is part of a Torah scroll, but does not know how it got to the museum.  When we showed interest in seeing it, he brought it out from a storage area. 

I’m not an expert in Torah scrolls, but I do know Hebrew and realized that it’s the segment from Deuteronomy that contains the Ten Commandments and the Shema.  A tiny piece of thread remained where this segment of parchment must have been sewn to the next segment.  Why this piece was saved and no other is a mystery, but perhaps someone thought that this a particularly important part.

After visiting the museum, we went to the Jewish cemetery.  The old part, as one of you messages indicated, had only two gravestones, one upright and one on its side, and the cow was still nearby.

These scenes of the main street in Zashkov. The other streets we were on were really just narrow semi-paved lanes.

As best we could ascertain, there are only a handful of Jews, if that, left in Zashkov.  This contrasted with Belaya Tserkov, a nearby city of 203,000 (where my grandmother was from), that has a Jewish community with a Jewish school and synagogue.

While we were in Kiev we attended Shabbat services at the progressive synagogue and met with the rabbi. 

The rest of our trip to Kiev, Odessa, and Belaya Tserkov were also very interesting.  We felt as though we learned a lot about Ukraine, a country with such a rich but sad Jewish (and non-Jewish) history.