President awards head of Odesa Association of Jews with the Order of Yaroslav the Wise

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has awarded Roman (Ruvin) Schwartzman, chairman of the Odesa Regional Association of Jews - Former Prisoners of the Ghetto and Nazi Concentration Camps, on the occasion of Independence Day.

According to the press service of the Office of the President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented him with the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, V degree.

Roman Shvartsman is also the vice president of the All-Ukrainian Association of Jews - Former Prisoners of the Ghetto and Nazi Concentration Camps and the deputy chairman of the Board of the Odesa Society of Jewish Culture and the head of the social and cultural center.

He was born in 1936 in the town of Bershad, Vinnytsia oblast, and moved to Odesa in 1956. In 1992, he became a member of the international organization of former ghetto and concentration camp inmates, which was founded in Odesa in 1991. To this day, he remains a permanent and active member of the organization. In 2002, at the Odesa regional conference dedicated to the results of the association's work, Roman Shvartsman was elected chairman of the association, which he still heads.

In late July and early August 1941, the Germans entered the town of Bershad. And in early September of that year, two ghettos were organized there, one of which was occupied by Roman Shvartsman's family. Jews from Bessarabia and nearby districts of the Vinnytsia region were deported to the Bershad ghetto. The total number of Jews amounted to 25 thousand people.

Кирило Бойко