Members of the Jewish community of Ternopol, which includes the entire Ternopol region in Western Ukraine, had a gatherin on July 3. The gathering took place at the site of the memorial to victims who were prisoners of the Ternopol ghetto. Seventy years ago, the ghetto occupied what is today the medical university. At the memorial local residents honored the memory of the Jews who were murdered at this location by occupying Nazi forces.
The chairman of the regional Jewish community, Igor Banzeruk (Katsner) opened the gathering and asked everyone present to observe a moment of silence to those Jews who died in World War II. Then veteran Liza Kovalzon lit candles in their honor and Alexander Balin read a memorial prayer. Representatives of four generations of Jews from Ternopol laid flowers and stones at the site where the mass murder of Jews occurred 70 years earlier.
The crowd listened to eye-witness testimonies about those terrible atrocities by Evgeny Chazov and Elizaveta Vakstein. The young people attending this event learned about the atrocities that the Nazis committed in the Ternopol ghetto, about the 18,000 Jews of Ternopol who were murdered by the Nazis, and about the struggles against the invaders at the front during World War II.