ONCE UPON A TIME IN BUKOVINA I Exhibition & Talk

Updated: Apr 28, 2023

A commemoration of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Jewish elementary school, Suceava, 1919

We continue our exploration of the history of Romanian Jewry before and after the Shoah with an event (exhibition & talk) that honors the memory of the once thriving community of Suceava, Bukovina, northern Romania, which was decimated in the killing fields of Transnistria. The fate of the innocent victims and of the survivors is told by some of the children of those who thankfully managed to return, whose testimonies have been collected in "Once upon a Time in Suceava - Bukovina", an impressive, two-volume book of oral history coordinated by Lily Pauker.

With opening remarks by Ambassador Cornel Feruță, Permanent Representative of Romania to the United Nations. Keynote remarks by Holocaust expert Dr. Diana Dumitru of Georgetown University and Dr. Marius Cazan, researcher at the "Elie Wiesel" Institute in Romania. Featuring Harry Bolner, Alina Budin, Paul Leinburd, Lily Pauker, and Eugen Weitmann (contributors to the book).

The exhibition "Once upon a Time in Bukovina", accompanied by Lily Pauker's documentary collage "October 9, 1941 – the day of deportation to Transnistria", recalls the memory of the Suceava Jews through the stories of the 56 children of the deportees who managed to escape the tragedy of Transnistria. The oral history book "Once upon a Time in Suceava - Bukovina" brings together memoirs of the descendants now scattered all over the world of the families subjected to the Transnistrian Holocaust.

Graphic concept of the exhibition by Alexandra Vacar.

This event is organized in partnership with the "Elie Wiesel" National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania.

TIME & LOCATION

January 27, 7 pm

Romanian Cultural Institute in New York

Free entrance. RSVP required.

Dr. Diana Dumitru is Ion Ratiu Visiting Professor in Romanian Studies at Georgetown University. Her research interests include the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, nationality policies and antisemitism in the USSR, and late Stalinism and postwar trials in the Soviet Union. Dr. Dumitru has held multiple fellowships that include a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship, a Fulbright Visiting Scholarship for research at Georgetown University, a research fellowship at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, a fellowship at Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, and a research fellowship at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg at Jena University in Germany. Her second book, The State, Antisemitism and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Currently, Dr. Dumitru is working on two projects: together with Chad Bryant and Kateřina Čapková, she is working on a book titled “The Trial that Shook the World: The Slánský Process and the Dynamics of Czechoslovak Stalinism,” a project supported by the American Council of Learned Societies and under contract with Oxford University Press. Simultaneously, Diana is working on her own book manuscript “Indispensable Yet Suspect: Soviet Jews under Late Stalinism.” Dr. Dumitru is an editorial board member of the scholarly journals Holocaust and Genocide Studies, East European Jewish Affairs, and Journal of Genocide Research.

Marius Cazan, Ph.D. in History, is a researcher at the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania. He was a member of the research team of the project “Economic Planning, Higher Education, and the Accumulation of Human Capital in Romania during Communism (1948-1989)”, held at the Centre for Administrative, Cultural, and Economic Studies, Department of Administration and Business, and financed by the National Research Council. He was a member of the team which implemented the project “The Reconstruction of Holocaust Public Memory in Post-Communism” at the “Elie Wiesel” Institute. He is currently a member of the EHRI (European Holocaust Research Infrastructure) project. His research areas of interest are the Holocaust in Romania, antisemitism, Romanian, online hate speech, communism, urban history, Romanian higher education history, and the history of everyday life during communism.

1. Volcineti, Romania, Deportation of Jews to Transnistria across the Dniester River, at Volcineti, 1942 // Source: Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

2. Moghilev Podolski, Ukraine, Jews waiting for a raft to transfer them to Transnistria, during the deportation, 1942 // Source: Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

3. Moghilev Podolski, Ukraine, Jews gathered on the western bank of the Dnister River, before their deportation to Transnistria, on the eastern bank, 1942 // Source: Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

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