Kherson State University hosted a public lecture entitled ‘The Holocaust in the Kherson Region’. The lecturer was Yuriy Kaparulin, Associate Professor of the Department of National, International Law and Law Enforcement at KSU, a visiting researcher and lecturer at the Weiser Center for European and Eurasian Studies, University of Michigan (USA).
The lecture was held as part of the work of the Educational and Cultural HUB and the optional course ‘Regional Peculiarities of the Holocaust in the South of Ukraine’, which is conducted under the cooperation between Kherson State University and the Claims Conference University Partnership Programme. This programme supports universities in teaching and researching the history of genocide and the Holocaust.
The lecture focused on the specifics of the Holocaust in our region. According to Yurii Kaparulin, the number of victims in Kherson and the region ranged from 10,000 to 15,000 people in total.
‘Today I will focus on the following general processes that occurred in Kherson and the region during the Second World War, during the Nazi occupation. Our task is to consider pre-war Jewish life in the Kherson region, the issue of occupation, and the mass murder of Kherson Jews that took place in the summer of 1941. Next, we will focus on the fate of Jews in rural areas. Finally, we will highlight the memory of the Holocaust at the local level,’ the lecturer said.
Yurii Kaparulin has been researching the Holocaust in our region for many years. He is also one of the co-authors of two documentaries, The Unknown Holocaust and Kalinindorf, which cover this tragedy.
‘The Unknown Holocaust is a documentary that tells the story of different categories of Nazi victims: Jews, Roma, prisoners of war, and patients of a psychiatric clinic. The movie Kalinindorf tells about the fate of Jews in rural areas. We have repeatedly organised public screenings. And The Unknown Holocaust, in particular the episode titled The Southern Ghetto, is available on YouTube, you can watch it,’ the co-author commented.