Author: Yevgen Tsymbalyuk
A new documentary video has been released about the history of the Karaite community in the city and the fascinating life of Dr. Yakov Kefeli, chief medical officer of the Black Sea during the time of Hetman Skoropadsky.
At the end of the 19th century, there were just over 500 Karaites living in Mykolaiv. They were a small but very influential community: immigrants from Crimea created a real ethnic quarter with their own kenasa on Katolitska Street.
The main character of the video is Yakov Kefeli. His biography is a real plot for a TV series: a graduate of the local gymnasium, who was fluent in Latin, Greek and Turkish; a doctor who saved the wounded on the fronts of World War I; the chief medical officer of the Ukrainian Marine Corps during the Ukrainian State; an emigrant who helped 50,000 refugees in Constantinople and ended his life near Paris. Interestingly, his descendants still live in Mykolaiv and Odesa.
The video was created as part of the project ‘What is Mykolaiv about? The Multi-Ethnic South,’ which is being implemented by the MY ART Platform in partnership with the Mykolaiv Development Agency and the Mykolaiv Crisis Media Centre with the support of Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Ukraine.
