On June 12^th, 2007 the International Conference “Berezhany in the Memory of Poles, Jews and Ukrainians” has been conducted in Berezhany, Ukraine. The conference commemorated the final liquidation of the Berezhany Jewish community, which occurred on June 12^th, 1943. On June 11^th, 2007 the conference was preceded by a march in the footsteps of the last Berezhany Jews, who had been executed in Okopisko, the old Jewish cemetery, sixty four years ago. Israelis, representing Berezhany survivors and the second and third generation of Berezhany Jews, have been joined in this commemorative march by dozens of Ukrainian residents of the town. The marchers’ column stopped several times to listen to the living testimonies by architect Menachem Katz (Haifa, Israel), the only survivor of the June 1943 execution. Prayers for the repose of the dead have been recited at the Okopisko monument commemorating the Berezhany Holocaust victims.

The one-day conference on June 12^th, 2007 was sponsored by Tkuma (Renascence) - The All-Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies jointly with Ukrainian State Historical and Architectural Society in Berezhany. The Conference hosted recognized scholars and witnesses. Dr. Myroslav Marynovych, the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv), who has discussed the multi-ethnic past of Galicia, Prof. Shimon Redlich, Ben- Gurion University (Israel), who has considered the Polish-Jewish-Ukrainian triangle in prewar and wartime Berezhany and Dr. Igor Shchupak, Director of Tkuma Center (Dnipropetrovsk), who has spoken about the Holocaust in Ukraine. Architect Menachem Katz vividly recalled the march of 300 Jewish men to the Okopisko Jewish cemetery. Mr. Zbigniew Rusinski (Rybnik, Poland), former Berezhany resident, retold his recollections of the war and the German occupation. Mr. Ryszard Brzezinski (Gliwice, Poland), a son of Berezhany Poles, shared with the audience his perception and emotional links of his parents’ hometown. Dr. Aharon Weiss, Tkuma Academic advisor, has made an excursus about Jewish communities’ life in small towns, shtetls, of Galicia in prewar and wartime and shared his thoughts about perspectives of Jewish communities development in present-day Ukraine. The morning session has been closed by greetings of Ambassador Wieslaw Osuchowski, Polish Consul in Lviv.

The afternoon session featured talks by local scholars and cultural activists, such as Mrs. Nadezhda Volynets, Mr. Bohdan Tikhyi, Mr. Stepan Kolodnitskyi, Mr. Volodymyr Paratsii, Mrs. Oksana Gurs’ka, Mrs. Galina Brits’ka, Mrs. Nadia Golod and Mrs. Natalia Sobkovich. Prof. Redlich’s book “Together and Apart in Brzezany”, published in English, Hebrew, Polish and Ukrainian, has been presented at the conference. The conference and the march to the Okopisko cemetery were filmed by Polish State TV.

The Berezhany Conference is considered to be the first of its kind in a small town in Western Ukraine, former Eastern Galicia It has evoked keen local public interest enabling to discuss the local past and confronting it honestly by Ukrainians, Jews and Poles, after decades of omission and erasure.

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Prof. Shimon Redlich,

Ben-Gurion University in Israel