feature story
On Yom HaShoah,
Ukrainian Jews
Grapple with
Identities at War
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
T Photos by Heather Ross
hough Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is an
Israeli memorial day of the 6 million Jewish lives lost in the
Holocaust, the day has become yet another opportunity for
those in the United States to mourn the tragedies of the Holocaust.

Ukrainian Holocaust survivors and refugees are mourning doubly
on this year’s Yom HaShoah, April 28: Th e holiday comes in tandem
with continued Russian attacks on Ukraine under Russian President
Vladimir Putin, who is not the fi rst totalitarian ruler to make waves
in Eastern Europe in the past hundred years.

But for families with recent memories of Soviet Union-era
antisemitism under Joseph Stalin, embracing a Ukrainian identity
in conjunction with a Jewish one, even in times of war, is proving
diffi cult.

As Bronislava Kerzhnerman, an 83-year-old Holocaust refugee
from Ukraine who lives in Philadelphia, lights a Yahrzeit candle
every year to remember lives lost, memories of her family in the
1940s being sent to barracks in a town outside of Siberia mix with
22 APRIL 28, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
news from her cousin in Kharkiv who had to evacuate an apartment
she had worked for years to aff ord.

“Th ey don’t look if it’s an adult or a child; they just kill,” Kerzhnerman
said about the similarities between Nazi and Soviet rule.

Kerzhnerman has only one photo from her childhood: a picture
her neighbor kept because it made her appear to look less Jewish.

When Kerzhnerman and her family left for Siberia, they didn’t
pack any additional clothing; Kerzhnerman’s mother thought the
war would be short-lived. Her grandfather fl ed with her brothers,
leaving Kerzhnerman’s mother to perform hard labor over an open
fi re.

When her mother was hospitalized with a severe burn injury,
Kerzhnerman was sent to an orphanage, which she repeatedly ran
away from, choosing to sit outside her mother’s hospital barrack and
nibble on rationed bread.

At one point, Kerzhnerman’s mother, aft er she recovered, was sent
to jail for allegedly speaking ill of Stalin.

Photos by Heather Ross
Ukrainian refugee and
Philadelphia resident Bronislava
Kerzhnerman looks at family
pictures. She emigrated from
Russia to the U.S. in 1987.