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Controversial Jewish memorial at former Lviv synagogue opened

Meylakh Sheykhet, standing in the remains of the Golden Rose. (Pavlo Palamarchuk)

Meylakh Sheykhet, standing in the remains of the Golden Rose. (Pavlo Palamarchuk)

MOSCOW (JTA) — The city of Lviv in western Ukraine inaugurated a controversial memorial monument on part of the former Golden Rose Synagogue complex.

On Sunday, Sept. 4, hundreds attended the unveiling of the Space of Synagogues led by Mayor Andriy Sadovy, despite legal action against the monument by Meylakh Sheykhet, Ukraine’s director of the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union.

The project features a memorial space with commemorative stone slabs on one area of the 16th-century Golden Rose complex, which the Nazis largely destroyed in the 1940s.

Started in July, 2015, the Space of Synagogues project also includes the controversial cementing of some of the complex’s foundations and relics.

Sheykhet objected to the project, calling it a ruse to create a public park at the expense of a Jewish heritage site in a central area of the city. He said the project serves tourist industry interests but falls short of international commemoration standards.

But Sofia Dyak, director of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, which is leading the project in partnership with the Lviv City Council, defended the project as “something dignified that exposes countless Ukrainians to the destruction of Lviv’s Jewish community” precisely because of its central location.

Sheykhet, who is among a handful of Orthodox Jews living in Lviv, has lobbied for the synagogue’s reconstruction in a city with a Jewish population of 1,200 — a vision his critics say is unrealistic.

Dyak said the current commemoration project may be expanded in the future, but that right now, “something is better than nothing.”

After a Ukrainian court issued an injunction against the memorial project in 2014, the city obtained permission from the Ministry of Culture. Sheykhet countersued, and a verdict is expected later this month.

In 1939, Lviv was home to 110,000 Jews — a third of its total population.



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