https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-youth-and-townsfolk-band-together-to-restore-neglected-jewish-cemetery/

Ukrainian youth and townsfolk band together to restore neglected Jewish cemetery

Kalush, Ukraine

An unlikely group of more than a hundred people came to clean up  the Jewish cemetery in the western Ukrainian town of  Kalush in mid-October.  There were local high school students,  about a dozen American Peace Corps volunteers,  and municipal office workers given the day off work by Mayor  Ihor Matviychuk. Only a handful of the participants were Jewish.

This picture of  harmonious Ukrainian-Jewish  relations  may seem surprising  as it runs counter to  the stereotype of anti-Semitism that taints  many press stories about present-day Ukraine.  But it just may be the forerunner of larger things to come.

One of the initiators of the clean-up was the principal of the high school that faces the cemetery.

“When I became principal three years ago, I felt a big sense of responsibility to do something about the neglected condition of the cemetery,” says Oksana Tabachuk, 49, the principal of the Kalush Gymnasium.” My family has been in Kalush since the seventeenth century  and I know that the Jewish community was also here for many generations,” she says, adding a an emotional reminiscence told to her by her mother who was a child during the war.  “She used to shudder as she described climbing the wall surrounding the cemetery and witnessing the ground moving for hours and hours after the Nazis shot Jews there.”

The cemetery wall has long since eroded and it is the lack of a protective barrier that  Tabachuk blames for a swastika being sprayed on a monument there last spring. “That act of vandalism was  not typical of Kalush people but it’s what happens when  some people go too far in their beliefs and misinterpret the  idea of nationalism,” she  explains. She notes that one of the teachers who rushed to paint over the swastika was Natalia Zubrytska, the granddaughter of a Ukrainian couple recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles for saving Jews during the Holocaust.

Prior to WW II, Kalush was a flourishing trading center in the hub of Poland’s Galicia region. Its prosperity was boosted by salt mines and the cross-pollination of business that came from a multi-cultural mix of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews; a pre-war population of  15,000, comprising almost equal numbers of each group.

The extermination of the Jewish community began in the summer of 1941 when the Nazis marched about 300 members of the Jewish intelligentsia outside the town and shot them in a forest.

Ironically, it was a visit by two American Peace Corps volunteers to the forest where the unmarked mass killing took place that eventually led to the citywide effort to take care of the Kalush Jewish cemetery.

“I was very touched by the trip to the forest that city historian Bohdan Yanevych took me and fellow Peace Corps volunteer Brennan Purtzer on,” recalls Deignan. “It seemed sad that there was no commemoration of the spot. We thought that if people from abroad started to visit the site, it would provide an incentive to build a memorial.”

It also occurred to Deignan that increasing awareness of the city’s tragic history might mesh together with one of her main goals  as  a business development advisor to the Kalush City Council: to promote tourism to the city.

Deignan’s search for other sites that might interest Jewish tourists led her to the Kalush Jewish cemetery, where she became intrigued by the sculpted headstones, which date back centuries.

When Deignan found out that the only care the cemetery received was from the Kalush Gymnasium,   she and  her city hall colleagues came up with the idea of an official city-sponsored event.

But at first there was some resistance.  As the educational curriculum mandated in Kyiv makes no mention of Jewish communities anywhere in Ukraine, some young residents were unaware that the city  had ever  had a Jewish population and  saw no need to get involved. Others  suggested that the cemetery upkeep should be paid for “by the descendants of the people buried there.”

But Deignan, 57, who formerly worked in the San Jose Attorney’s Office in California, put her skills in navigating bureaucracies  to work and together with her colleagues negotiated a compromise: the city would proclaim a Day of Action devoted to cleaning both the Jewish and an old Ukrainian cemetery. City workers who did so would be given the day off work.

News of the event spread widely through social media and the local press.

Many  other Peace Corps volunteers stationed in  western Ukraine also joined in; there are about 300 volunteers working throughout Ukraine in an effort to shore up democratic values in a country that borders on Russia.

During the weekend that the Day of Action took place, it was another event that occurred in Ukraine which caught the attention of the  Jewish press:  on October 14 Ukrainian nationalists marched in Kyiv  to commemorate the 76^th anniversary of the founding of the  Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). UPA is viewed in a heroic light by Ukrainians today because it  fought  for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union. But as Holocaust historians have noted,  UPA was   one of the wartime militias involved  in violence against Jews.

Some local Jewish observers suggest however,  that the present day glorification has more to do with anti-Russian feelings than anti-Semitism.

“There was a change in their ideology after 1943,” explains Yuri Radchenko, a historian who teaches at Kharkiv University  and who has held research positions at the U.S.  Holocaust Memorial Museum.  “After 1943, Stepan Bandera, their political leader, tried to remove the anti-Semitic element of their ideology,” says Radchenko, pointing out that until then a commonly used slogan was ‘Kill the Bolshevik Jew”.  Radchenko notes that   present-day Ukrainian nationalists try  to  “rebrand Bandera as a kind of liberal democrat”.  Even if historically incorrect, says Radchenko, this  rebranding does perhaps indicate that the nationalist marches do not in themselves  signify an anti-Semitic message.

Radchenko, points out that he regularly wears a kippah when  he goes back and forth to synagogue services in Kyiv. He also notes that his ongoing research on the  subject of the militias  is an indication that Ukrainian researchers  are not hampered by a 2015 Ukrainian law criminalizing rhetoric critical of the anti-communist Ukrainian partisans.

Radchenko’s sanguine depiction of present-day Ukrainian sentiments is borne out by  statistics compiled by the Ukrainian National Minority Rights Monitoring Group, an organization similar to the ADL in the U.S.

“There actually has been a decline in anti-Semitic incidents in recent years,” observes Vyacheslav Likhachev, who is one of the authors of the report.  The 2017 report provides detailed descriptions  of a total of 25 anti-Semitic incidents reported that year — almost all comprising acts of vandalism. “Since 2016 there have been  no reports of violence against people,”  says Likhachev, who previously worked as a guide at Yad Vashem.

Likhachev however does feel that the country has not adequately addressed all aspects of its World War Two history. “The  existential threat posed by the Russians today keeps the society from having a proper reflection of its  own past, ” he observes.

One Kalush resident who is not reluctant to reflect  about the past is Arthur Yefremov, 28, the director of the Kalush City Museum.  Yefremov recently curated an exhibit on Jewish rituals and is well aware that the museum is situated in a building that served as  a prewar Jewish community center. “To try to conceal the history of this building would be like creating a kind of  ‘fake history’ ,” says Yefremov. “In World War Two not only did Kalush lose its Jewish community, it also lost a good part of its history. It’s time we did something about that.”

Yefremov feels that his generation simply needs to learn the facts. “We cannot be held responsible for the deeds or misdeeds of our grandparents or great-grandparents,” he comments.

One month after the Day of Action, Patricia Deignan returned to the Kalush Jewish Cemetery with a group of visiting Jewish descendants of the region. During their visit, the delegation was warmly received by  city officials with whom they discussed plans to develop a Jewish heritage tourism program.

As the delegation arrived at the graveyard, the headstones cleared in October glowed handsomely in the golden morning light. One delegation member, Marla Raucher Osborn, who has led efforts to restore the Jewish cemetery in Rohatyn, noted that it was remarkable that the Kalush headstones were still standing in their places,  unlike in other places where  headstones have been stolen and used as pavement.

The Kalush headstones may be exceptional in one other way: in the impact they are having on the youngsters looking after them.

“Every day when I saw the cemetery on the way to school, I kept thinking that something that old needs to be taken care of,’’ said Yura Gulivatyy, 16, who was one of the clean-up’s student leaders. “When we finally did something about it, it gave me  a great feeling of kaif,” mused Gulivatyy,  using the teenage Ukrainian slang word for euphoria. “We are living in the twenty-first century,  in a period of globalism when it’s important for different people to get closer to one another,” he added.

Bernard Dichek

Salad Bowl pdf

Salad Bowl for the Desert

An Israeli start-up is enabling Beduin families, without any agricultural training, to grow their own fresh vegetables in the harsh, arid conditions of the Negev desert.

Lakiya, Negev…

“These tomatoes have a much better fragrance and taste than the ones we buy in the market,” says Siham Abu Salame, as she opens the tent-like canvas window to a mini-greenhouse in the dusty courtyard of her home in the northern Negev town of Lakiya.  She proudly points out a dozen or so cherry tomato plants sprouting from the soil-less water container inside the  five-meter square structure known as the Living Box. On an adjacent wall outside, a small solar energy panel provides electricity to power the hydroponic pumping system.

Abu Salame, a divorced mother of six  is one of several Beduin participating in a pilot study being conducted to see if families living in low-resource environments can use the technology to achieve food security.

The Living Box is the brainchild of two young Israeli entrepreneurs, chemical engineer Nitzan Solan and marine biologist Moti Cohen, both hydroponics experts in their early thirties. Cohen, who serves as an adviser to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has helped the FAO develop hydroponic systems for farmers in Ghana, Ethiopia and Gaza. One of the Gaza projects, which Cohen continues to support with online advice, involves a Palestinian farmer commercially growing lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, cabbage and onions on the rooftop of the six-story apartment building in which he lives.

“Working on the Gaza project and others in Africa made me think about ways to lower the cost of hydroponic systems so  they could be readily used by individual families in the developing world,” says Cohen.

The Living Box is the result. Together with CEO Solan, Cohen, two years ago, developed a prototype for a ready-to-assemble kit that could be mass-produced, sold at a low price and easily operated by people without previous agricultural experience.

“Two of the biggest problems faced by many people in the developing world are a lack of water and a lack of arable land,” says Solan, noting that hydroponic systems require only about 20 percent of the water used in regular farming. “Our system is also compact enough to be set up on a rooftop or balcony or small yard,” she adds, saying a single Living Box can provide all the vegetables a family requires for its daily needs.

Even though the Living Box has been designed to reach some of the poorest people in the world, Cohen and Solan believe the product can be developed and sold on a profit-making basis.

“Our business model is based on selling the units to either NGOs or individual families through micro-finance programs. Once families have successfully operated a single Living Box to meet their own food needs, they will be able to purchase additional units in order to grow additional vegetables to sell in their neighborhood and generate income,” explains Cohen.

In addition to a grant from the philanthropic UK Pears Foundation, the Living Box venture has attracted seed funding of $400,000 from private investors and is currently engaged in its first round of major fund-raising.

Both Cohen and Solan are passionate advocates of hydroponic farming. Cohen has also set up Living Green, a company that promotes urban agriculture and sells a variety of hydroponic systems to individuals and businesses across Israel. In addition, Cohen has partnered with the owners of Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center, and set up a commercial hydroponic greenhouse on the rooftop of the iconic shopping mall. The company currently supplies salad greens to more than 20 of Tel Aviv’s leading restaurants and food stores.

“We are able to produce vegetables year-round and deliver them fresh, daily to customers located within a very short radius,” says Cohen, noting that the Dizengoff Center greenhouse currently produces more than 15,000 heads of lettuce and other greens a month.

“In recent years there has been a growing public awareness of the health and environmental advantages of growing vegetables through hydroponic systems,” says Cohen, noting that hydroponic systems can grow vegetables without the use of chemical sprays.

Cohen points out that the Living Box system will also bring these advantages to users in the developing world, but says the company is aware of the need for local partners. “We realize that before introducing  a new technology in a culture different than our own, it’s important to understand the social and cultural outlook of the community involved,” he adds.

For that reason, the Beduin pilot study is being conducted in collaboration with Sidreh, a non-profit organization that aims to improve the welfare of Beduin women.

“Because we have been working with Beduin women on desert vegetable garden projects for some time, the Living Box model fit naturally into our existing program,” says Melanie Atrash, a team leader with the Sidreh organization.

She points out that about half of the Negev’s 200,000 Beduin residents live in what are known as unrecognized towns ‒ areas that are unconnected to the government water systems or electrical grid. Consequently, the living conditions in the unrecognized towns very much resemble those of the developing world.

“We didn’t think, however, that it would be a good idea to start with the communities living in the tough conditions of the unrecognized towns,” she says. “Instead, we decided to see if the new [Living Box] system would first work in recognized towns such as Lakiya where people are connected to the water and electrical infrastructures.”

If the initial pilot study succeeds in Lakiya, Atrash expects that the project will be able to expand to the outlying desert regions.

Though it is too early for Atrash to evaluate the pilot study,  she says she has been impressed with the results so far, noting that the women “gain a sense of empowerment out of being able to work independently and produce their own vegetables.”

Cohen also is pleased with the initial feedback he has received from the Beduin users.

“We believe that if we can succeed in the hot climate of the Negev desert, we will be able to bring the Living Box to communities in hot regions anywhere in the developing world,” he says.

Bernard Dichek

The Jerusalem Report Aug. 22 2016

giving sight to the blind

One of Efi Cohen Arazi’s strongest childhood memories is looking after his blind grandmother is.  “I remember how hard it was for her to be totally dependent on someone else to get her a drink or move around our home,” recalls Cohen Arazi, noting that it was only in his grandmother’s elderly years that she lost her eyesight. The reason for her blindness was age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease that every year damages the vision of an estimated 200,000 people in the U.S. alone.

Nano Retina, a startup co-founded by Cohen Arazi in 2009,  has developed a technology that promises to restore eyesight to AMD and other visually impaired patients. “We expect the first patient to be implanted with our product in 2016,” says Cohen Arazi, noting that the assembly of the product began in early March at a semiconductor manufacturing facility in northern Israel.

The Nano Retina technology looks and works like a bionic body part in a science fiction movie. It consists  of a tiny microchip that is implanted into the eye;  and it is powered by wireless electrical energy transmitted from a battery in an accompanying pair of glasses worn by the patient. The microchip is  about one quarter of the size of a postage stamp and  operates like a miniature camera converting light images into neural messages. The brain decodes  the neural signals with a visual clarity of about  600 pixels, a quality similar to that of some  early stage digital cameras. The quality is expected to reach 2000 pixels in the second-generation version.

“Inserting the chip into the eye only requires a relatively simple 20 minute operation,” says Cohen Arazi, holding a sample of the tiny product  on the tip of his finger. He then puts on the accompanying  glasses and sums up the product’s impact. “It allows people to become independent again.”

As the proprietary technology developed by NanoRetina enables disrupted nerves to communicate with each other again, the company is exploring other applications including spinal repair.

The financial side of the Nano Retina story is in many ways just as interesting as the technological one. The company is backed by American, Israeli and Chinese investors.

The main Israeli investor is Rainbow Medical, an investment and management company that has founded 12 medical device companies since it was founded in 2008 by Cohen Arazi together with two iconic figures of the Israeli business scene, Leon Recanati, scion of an Israeli banking dynasty and the head of GlenRock Israel,  and Yossi Gross, a serial medical device entrepreneur.  Prior to becoming the CEO of Rainbow Medical, Cohen Arazi had served in senior management positions in Israeli, Swiss and American healthcare companies, including a stint as VP at California-based Amgen, one of the largest biotech companies in the world.

The American investor  and co-founder is Jim Von Ehr, a nanotechnology expert and the founder of Texas-based Zyvex Labs.  “Yossi and I met Jim at a conference in Dallas where  he gave us  a tour of his R&D facilities,” recalls Cohen Arazi. “After we saw the unique potential of his nanotechnology platform, we put off our flight back to Israel and stayed on in Dallas to work with him on the Nano Retina concept.”

The Chinese investor in NanoRetina is the Ping An insurance company, a huge enterprise employing 600,000 workers and managing more than $500 billion in assets.  Ping An’s investment came as the result of years of efforts by Cohen Arazi to find ways to collaborate with China.

He points out that there is an excellent strategic fit between Israel and China in the area of medical device technology.

“They have a rapidly growing market, which includes a rapidly-expanding middle class that already exceeds 300 million people, “he observes, adding that the Chinese government has committed $70 billion to healthcare development in its  current 5-year economic plan.

On the Israeli side, he notes that the Chinese hold Israeli technology and culture in high esteem. “But in order to work with them you have to be there,” he says, explaining that he has made numerous trips to China and worked hard to get to know their way of life.

When asked if he is concerned about Israeli products being illegally copied, he points out that NanoRetina and other technologies in the Rainbow Medical portfolio are all “super complex and technologically very challenging.”

In addition, he points out that Rainbow Medical continues to keep control of its assets. Unlike the recent controversial Israel-China deal in which a Chinese company acquired 75 percent ownership of Tnuva, Israel’s flagship dairy company, Ping An remains a minority Nano Retina shareholder .

For Rainbow Medical, the Chinese investment in Nano Retina also represented a turning point in Rainbow Medical’s collaborations with China. Since then Chinese investors have taken a stake in another  portfolio company Gluesense, the developer of an implant for monitoring diabetes conditions.

“An unwanted outcome of the Western influence on China, has been a shift towards eating more wheat products and fried foods such as doughnuts,” observes Cohen Arazi. “Consequently, the upsurge in diabetes.”

But the most significant development has been a  recent $25 million investment by Chinese investors in Rainbow Medical itself, aimed at helping Rainbow nurture existing and new portfolio companies. In addition to Ping An, other Chinese investors include ZTE, the Chinese telecommunications giant, a major Chinese financial management company and several Chinese venture capital funds.

“The Chinese are eager to diversify their investments and see Israel as an attractive place,” says Cohen Arazi, adding that Rainbow has opened a full-time office in Shanghai headed by a local Chinese national.

The $25 million investment in Rainbow Medical came just a few weeks ahead of the BrainTech Conference held in Tel Aviv in mid-March. There were many young Israeli inventors and would-be entrepreneurs in the audience when Cohen Arazi outlined Rainbow Medical’s plans.

“There are a lot of bright Israeli scientists out there with ideas worthy of commercialization,” says Cohen Arazi. With Rainbow Medical’s  model of low-cost and innovative Israeli R&D being combined with  investment capital from all over the world, it’s clear that  the company can be expected to establish many new startups in the days to come.

Sidebar 1: In the Right Place At The Right Time

Ingrid Ye was in the right place at the right time. At a time when many young Chinese professionals set their eyes on America or Europe to broaden their experience, Ye decided in 2012 to pursue an MBA at Tel Aviv University. “I had just read the Start-Up Nation book about Israel and I thought that coming to Israel might provide me with opportunities in a place uncrowded with Chinese,” she tells The Jerusalem Report. While studying at TAU, she met the managers of Rainbow Medical just as the Israeli firm was  looking for someone familiar with Chinese culture to facilitate collaborations.  She began to work for Rainbow and today heads the Israeli company’s office in Shanghai. “Until a few years ago, there was not much activity between Chinese and Israelis in the medical device sector, but now there are delegations coming and going between the two countries all the time,” she observes. She points out that one of the challenges of her job is getting Chinese companies to make their first investment in Israel. “They have been investing in American and European companies for quite awhile, but once they see that working here is actually quite safe they are able to see the potential of Israeli innovation.” She notes that by supporting Israeli R&D the Chinese investors expect to be able to help bring products to large international markets. “For the Israeli industry this will lead to the creation of more jobs as Israeli professionals support international marketing and distribution efforts.”

Sidebar 2: From Startup Nation to Brain Nation

Turning Israel  into a worldwide brain technology hub is the latest idea launched by Israel’s former president and serial visionary, Shimon Peres. “We want to go from being the Startup Nation to being the Brain Nation,” said Peres at the Israel Brain Technologies conference in Tel Aviv in March. Conference Chairman Dr. Rafi Gidron pointed out that more than 100 Israeli companies currently have technologies in development or use for brain-related conditions. Among them: Lifegraph which uses smartphones for monitoring the condition of psychiatric patients, NINISpeech, developer of a device for helping stutterers improve their speaking fluency, and Myndlift, which uses neuro-feedback to help ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder and Hyperactivity Disorder) patients improve their concentration.

Bernard Dichek

The question caught me off guard. “How do you feel about the Germans today? Do you hate them?” It came up in discussions with the audience after both screenings of my film at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival in Greece last month. As questions often reveal quite a bit about the questioners, I really shouldn’t have been surprised, considering that the Greeks, non-Jews as well as Jews, had suffered bitterly at the hands of the Nazis. That bitterness still seems to be more in the air there than even in Israel, in part, because the subject is not frequently vented publicly in Greece, and in part, because of the resentment many Greeks feel today towards the Germans for the current economic crisis. But my film doesn’t really deal with the Germans, though it does touch on the Ukrainian collaboration. Called The Kalusz I Thought I Knew and featured in a section of the festival dealing with the topic of memory, the documentary tells the story of my search for my father’s house, and how the images that filled my childhood from my father’s stories contrast with the humdrum events of life in a small present-day Ukrainian town. In Israel, at discussions following screenings at the Haifa Film Festival and elsewhere, the topic of personal animosity hadn’t come up. My simple answer to the Greek questioners was that I don’t. But there’s more to it than that. My main conclusion is that it’s not really a matter of hating or not hating. It’s a matter of telling the story — and letting the chips fall where they may. It’s only now that I realize how important it was for my father to keep on telling his story, back in the 1950′s and 60′s when public discussion about the ‘war’ as it was called in those days was taboo. Long before the terms ‘shoah’ and ‘holocaust’ were coined, a decade or two before the American TV series Holocaust, Elie Wiesel’s bestsellers, the movie Schindler’s List and Holocaust memorials and everything else that put the subject on the map, my father kept on telling his stories to anyone that would listen, even if most people didn’t want to hear it and many didn’t believe him. And it was only in making my film, and thereby retelling his stories, that I came to realize that no matter how devastating the actual tragedy was, events are always finite and limited in time. Stories, on the other hand, can have a kind of immeasurable impact, and aren’t limited in time. So there I was in Greece, about 70 years after the event, telling through a film subtitled into Greek,  a language my father didn’t speak, the story of how my father was put on a train with two of his younger brothers. The plan was for him to jump first and the others to follow immediately afterwards. He jumped out but he never saw his brothers again. That story is a story I will keep on telling. And it doesn’t really matter if they are the descendants of survivors, and find something that resonates with their family story, or if they find something that makes them uncomfortable, as a Ukrainian member of the audience did. My father and most of his generation are no longer with us. The war is over. But the stories remain.

5/12/2014 The stories remain | Bernard Dichek | Ops & Blogs | TheTimes of Israel https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-stories-remain/ 1/2 The stories remain BERNARD DICHEK APRIL 27, 2014, 9:44 AM © 2014 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED