In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Yiddish Memories of Small-Town Jewish Life in Ukraine

August 12, 2026

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5 min read

In 2003, a team of researchers filmed a Soviet Victory Day parade in a small Ukrainian town. Among the marchers carrying hammer-and-sickle flags were elderly Jewish veterans of the Red Army, men who had fought the Nazis and returned to rebuild their lives in the very shtetls the Holocaust had emptied. One of them, Alexei Futuran, rolled up his sleeve to show a tattoo. It was not a concentration camp number, but his own name, etched by his comrades before battle so his body could be identified if he fell. For him, the mark symbolized not dehumanization but heroism. That stark difference in meaning—between Western Holocaust memory and the lived experience of Jews who stayed in the Soviet Union—is the central insight of Jeffrey Veidlinger’s research, which he presented in a lecture based on his book In the Shadow of the Shtetl.

The Survivors the World Forgot

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What you'll learn

1 (00:04) **Introduction and Speaker Background** - Alex Weiser introduces the Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series and Professor Jeffrey Veidlinger.
2 (02:38) **The Overlooked Post-Holocaust Shtetl** - Veidlinger explains that the story of shtetl life after the Holocaust has been told exclusively by those who left, who assumed nothing remained.
3 (05:00) **The AHEYM Project: Documenting Yiddish Life** - Veidlinger describes the oral history project that recorded Yiddish speakers in shtetls, primarily in Transnistria.
4 (08:44) **Soviet Jewish War Memory: Victors, Not Victims** - Veidlinger explains how returning Jews remembered the war through a Soviet lens, emphasizing heroism over victimhood.
5 (16:06) **Vengeance and Soviet Patriotism** - Another interviewee, Epstein Skoblitzki, emphasized the role of vengeance in his war experience.
6 (19:31) **The Housing Crisis and Return** - Veidlinger details the severe housing crisis that returning Jews faced after the war.
7 (23:32) **Rising Postwar Antisemitism** - The housing crisis contributed to growing anti-Jewish hostility as returning Jews tried to reclaim property.

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Show Notes

Drawing from some four hundred Yiddish-language interviews conducted by the Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories project, Jeffrey Veidlinger will explore how elderly Yiddish speakers in Ukraine described their memories of Jewish life in the Soviet shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism.

This exploration will help us understand how despite Stalinist repressions, the Holocaust, and official antisemitism, these interviews infused with memories of family life, religious observance, education, and work testify to the survival of Jewish life, even within the shadow of the shtetl.

This lecture originally took place on July 1, 2025.

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