Posted by Joe on July 29, 2000 at 02:42:34:
In Reply to: 2 Joe: Карпатська Україна перша вчинила опір нацистам posted by Янко on July 19, 2000 at 21:49:54:
For example, Joachim Schoenfeld in his Shtetl Memoirs (1985) writes fondly of his youthful trips into the Carpathians:
The Hutzuls (Ruthenian mountaineers) who were in the mountains for the entire summer tending their sheep in the poloninas ([upland] pastures) were very hospitable people, and anyone who came up to them was always welcome to find shelter in their coliba [hut], to sleep on fresh hay alongside the watra (watchfire). Whoever came to their hut was also invited to share in their meal, which consisted of mamaliga (corn bread cooked in salted water to a hard consistency) with bryndza (sheep cheese) and milk. They didn't ask for payment but were more than happy if they were rewarded with pipe tobacco, which they couldn't afford to buy. . . . The evenings were spent with the Hutzuls, listening to their tales about Dobosh (a kind of Robin Hood), and the miracles performed by the svaty Srulko, the Saint Israel, i.e. the Bal Shem Tov, whom even Dobosh revered and admired. (pp. 130-131)
This passage, typical of descriptions of pre-World War I Jewish-Rusyn relations, is indicative of a high degree of cultural cross-fertilization (linguistic and even religious) and generally paints a portrait two peoples in harmonious symbiosis. Even the work of Gross and Cohen, which is particularly strident in its accusations against the Rusyns, refers to Jewish and Rusyn children playing together as well as the use by Rusyns of Jewish Rabbinical courts and Jewish midwives.
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Following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia forced by the Nazis in October 1938, the Ukrainophiles set up (initially with the assistance of the Russophiles) the first autonomous government in Subcarpathian Rus', later calling it Carpatho- Ukraine. These developments from the new capital of Chust were alarming to the Jewish community. One memoir records that Jews were afraid to travel after hours, since "non-Jews [were] going about in the streets like drunkards, screaming dire threats against Jews and their businesses." The Nazis took advantage of their own popularity, in particular among the Ukrainians active in the region, and sponsored an antisemitic campaign directed at rousing the Rusyns against their Jewish neighbors. More ominously, Ukrainians in Chust are said to have openly prepared "blacklists" of wealthy Jews, an activity which was consistent with the Nazi pattern of "aryanization," or confiscation of Jewish property. Although aryanization was typically a first stage in what was to become the murder process, Carpatho-Ukraine was too short-lived to be further involved. Hungarian troops crossed the border and occupied the entire region in March 1939, after which it was renamed Carpathia (Hungarian: Karpatalja) .