Les Juifs de Kiev

Although Jewish residence was long restricted under the Russian Empire, Kyiv eventually came to host a large Jewish community, principally Ashkenazi, in the nineteenth century as the city became a major commercial and industrial center. Its Jews were present in trade, sugar, banking, crafts, and the liberal professions, and the city was the scene of pogroms as well as the notorious Beilis trial in the early twentieth century. Under the Soviet regime, religious communal life was repressed while a secularized Jewish culture developed. During the German occupation, the Babi Yar massacre of September 1941 exterminated tens of thousands of the city's Jews within a matter of days.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan