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Eastern Europe

A woman beats a pot next to a placard reading 'Zionism is not dead yet, and we don't know when it will be,' at a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel rally in Podgorica, Montenegro, September 14, 2025. (Photo by SAVO PRELEVIC / AFP)
August 8, 2026, 3:04 am
Montenegro’s tiny Jewish community navigates rising hostility toward Israel
Southeast European country remains a top destination for Israeli tourists, but some worry recent proliferation of libels against Jewish state are influencing local opinion
By Larry Luxner
Librarian Olga Sivak holds up a newspaper from 1913, Bessarabian Life, at the Jewish Museum of Moldova in Chișinău. (Photo by Larry Luxner via JTA)
September 23, 2025, 4:44 pm
Most Moldovan Jews fled decades ago. Local Jewish life is now fueled by their descendants
Decimated by pogroms, the Holocaust and years of Soviet rule, the small but tenacious community is coping with antisemitism, poverty and an influx of refugees from neighboring Ukraine
By Larry Luxner
Illustrative: People walk past a billboard depicting the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in Tiraspol, the capital of the Russia-backed breakaway region of Transnistria, in Moldova on November 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
August 30, 2025, 3:11 am
As war rages in neighboring Ukraine, Transnistria’s Jews feel caught in a Soviet time warp
The Russian-aligned breakaway state in Moldova had a Jewish population of 300,000 before the Holocaust. The few remaining today battle heightened poverty amid neighboring conflict
By Larry Luxner
Illustrative: Leaders of the New York-based YIVO open crates of salvaged YIVO treasures from Europe, photographed in New Jersey, 1947. (Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
March 21, 2025, 4:17 pm
Dirty jokes and sacred texts: YIVO marks 100 years of preserving Yiddish culture
Artifacts from 1,000 years of Ashkenazi Jewish life including literary transcripts, Herzl’s diary, everyday notes and children’s scrawls connect prewar Jews with generations to come
By Cathryn J. Prince
Mikheil Kavelashvili reacts after being elected as Georgian's new president at the parliament in Tbilisi on December 14, 2024. (Vano Shlamov/AFP)
December 14, 2024, 7:15 pm
Georgia lawmakers elect hardline critic of West as new president
Former soccer player Mikheil Kavelashvili leads pro-Russian splinter group, concerning protesters who have warned against attempt to ‘bring Georgia back to its Soviet roots’
By felix light
Handmade matzah being made at a factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, June 10, 2024. (Marcel Gascón Barberá/ JTA)
September 3, 2024, 10:13 pm
Baking matzah and defying blackouts, Dnipro’s Jews press on despite Ukraine war
Less than 125 miles from the front line in the ongoing battle after Russia’s invasion, operations in the Jewish community continue, providing needed support in harrowing times
By MARCEL GASCÓN BARBERÁ
From left: David Leopold, Sasha Wilson, Joseph Cullen, Lawrence Boothman and Clare Fraenkel in 'The Brief Life and Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria,' now at 59E59 Theaters. (Carol Rosegg/ via JTA)
May 10, 2024, 10:44 am
New dark comedy for stage asks: Was Bulgaria’s King Boris III friend or foe to the Jews?
The paradoxical leader dabbled in fascism, was loved by his people, saved 50,000 lives while enacting antisemitic laws, and is the subject of a play running in NYC through June 2
By Elizabeth Karpen
Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attend a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, April 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk, File)
October 1, 2023, 5:11 am
Is Poland’s government shooting itself in the foot with its cooling stance on Ukraine?
Running for reelection, the ruling Law and Justice party is flailing in every direction to keep its populist credibility, but its latest pivot may have far-reaching implications
By Paul Hockenos
Roman Vishniac and his daughter Mara c. mid-1930s. (© Gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley)
May 11, 2023, 10:29 pm
Daughter helps turn lens on pioneering photographer father Roman Vishniac in new film
In ‘Vishniac,’ screening at DovAviv from May 11, filmmaker Laura Bialis shows a man who documented pre-Holocaust European Jewry, then reinvented himself as a self-styled scientist
By Renee Ghert-Zand
Hasidic Jewish pilgrims pray outside the tomb of late miracle rabbi Yeshaya Steiner, also known as Rebbe Shaya'le, at the Jewish cemetery in the village of Bodrogkeresztur, Hungary, on April 23, 2023, during a pilgrimage of Hasidic Jews on the occasion of Rabbi Steiner's 98th death anniversary. (ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP)
April 25, 2023, 5:06 pm
Followers of ‘miracle rabbi’ transform sleepy Hungarian village
Arriving by bus, plane, and even helicopter, 50,000 predominantly male Hasidic Jews attend increasingly popular pilgrimage to grave of wonder-working Rabbi Shayele
By Peter Murphy
A view of a Shabbat dinner at Moishe House Kyiv, which has housed displaced people during the Russian invasion. (Moishe House Kyiv/ via JTA)
July 13, 2022, 2:57 am
The Moishe House in Kyiv has become a safe haven during wartime
Usually a place where young people host Jewish events, these hubs have taken on added responsibilities since the Russian invasion, including providing food and shelter to the needy
By Michelle Cohen
British Jews marching in protest of the 1918-1921 pogroms. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Veidlinger)
December 21, 2021, 3:58 am
20 years before the Holocaust, pogroms killed 100,000 Jews – then were forgotten
‘In the Midst of Civilized Europe’ by Jeffrey Veidlinger revisits the brutal violence in 1918-1921 that portended a genocide of Europe’s Jews, and was soon overshadowed by it
By Rich Tenorio
The interior of the Great Synagogue of Slonim, Belarus, pictured in 2007. (Wikimedia Commons via JTA)
March 6, 2021, 9:32 am
In Eastern Europe, historical synagogues are sold for the price of a used car
Dilapidated structures, left empty after the Holocaust, are sold for cheap, but owners must carry out costly restorations and maintenance
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Members of the Wagabunda Scouts troop haul a fallen tree out of the the Jewish cemetery of Nowe Miasto, Poland, November 11, 2020. (Julia Bandurska/ via JTA)
November 20, 2020, 8:02 pm
Non-Jewish Polish leader works to clean up country’s forgotten Jewish cemeteries
While recent Independence Day celebrations saw xenophobic displays, Michał Laszczkowski and a group of Scouts — who have never met a Jew — use day to restore national history
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Alexander Vetshteyn prays at the Jurmala synagogue, October 30, 2019. (Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)
December 27, 2019, 11:04 am
In Latvia, luxury synagogue opens in a beach resort for oligarchs
First Jewish house of worship built since the Holocaust, which only 200 of the country’s 90,000 Jews survived, fulfills an essential function, but is subject to seasonal woes
By Cnaan Liphshiz
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