Dateline: Buczacz, Western Ukraine, March 18, 2010: Ninety miles from Lvov, in what is today western Ukraine, sits the town of Buczacz. Sometimes a part of Poland, at others a part of the Austrian province of Galicia, the pre-war population consisted of Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish communities. And it was here, in Buczacz in 1888, Nobel Prize laureate Shai Agnon (Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes) was born. Today, Dr. Yael Blau, Agnon's grand-daughter came, for the first time, to visit the place where her family had lived. Agnon was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, during a time when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union - a country that provided no recognition, or even acknowledgment, of the honor. Now, in Buczacz, Agnon is considered a cultural icon; a street has been named in his … Continue Reading

Dateline: Sidorovichi, Western Ukraine, March 15, 2010: A light snow fell over-night and, in a way, was a fitting backdrop. For on this cold, blustery March morning, we were traveling to Sidorvichi in Western Ukraine. Even with GPS, this tiny village of 200 - situated between Kiev and Chernobyl - was difficult to locate. As we proceeded slowly down the narrow road we could see in the distance that a group of villagers had gathered. We were still not sure we had reached our destination. But as we came closer, sitting side-by-side in the fresh snow, we spotted the flags of the State of Israel and the country of Ukraine, blowing together in the wind, and we knew we had arrived. We had journeyed to Sidorvichi with Yuval Rabin to honor the memory of his father, Israel's slain Prime Minister and Nobel … Continue Reading