LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian city of Lviv, once a major center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, is commemorating the 75th anniversary of the annihilation of the city’s Jewish population by Nazi Germany and honoring those working today to remember and preserve what they can of that vanished world.
City authorities will honor recipients during Sunday’s ceremony with glass keys modeled by an American artist on an old metal synagogue key that she found at a Lviv market. The event, which will include a concert set amid the ruins of synagogues, comes amid a larger attempt to remember and celebrate the Jews of this region.
Organizers says it is the first time the city in western Ukraine has acknowledged in such an extensive way the work of Jewish heritage preservation.