A note from the translator

My biggest concern while translating Volodymyr Muzychenko’s book, Jewish Ludmir: The History and Tragedy of the Jewish Community of Volodymyr-Volynsky; A Regional History, was to find the correct English spellings for the multitude of terms from the Hebrew and the Yiddish languages, including names of Jewish organizations, individuals’ names, and sacred objects of the Jewish faith. For help in researching those terms with which I was not familiar, I relied on the wonderful web site of The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, located at: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/.

The opportunity to translate this book, which explores the history of the Jewish community in the Ukrainian city of Volodymyr-Volynsky, or Ludmir, was literally a dream come true for me. When I was doing my graduate studies in Slavic Studies at the University of Toronto many decades ago, I was struck by the large number of Jewish writers who were active in Ukrainian literature of the 1920s. I decided then and there that my long-term goal would be to further Ukrainian-Jewish cooperation by translating Ukrainian-language works of literature or history about the Jews of Ukraine. Forty years after formulating the idea of making my personal contribution to building bridges between the Ukrainian and Jewish communities, I can state with pride that this work has begun in earnest.

—Marta Daria Olynyk