Jewish motifs and interethnic relations in Yeva Biss’s writings

This article explores the depiction of Jews in the works of Yeva Biss, a Slovak-born writer of prose fiction who wrote in Ukrainian. Nearly half of her literary output addresses Jewish themes, reflecting the historical and cultural proximity between Ruthenian-Ukrainian and Jewish communities in ethnically diverse regions such as modern-day Ukraine and Eastern Slovakia. Drawing on imagology, the study examines how Biss portrays the Other within a shared geographical, linguistic and economic space. Biss’s decision to write about Jews, despite their absence from her contemporary environment, is significant. Although she was not of Jewish descent, her empathy for persecuted groups likely stemmed from her own experiences of repression due to her ties with Ukrainian nationalism. Through nine selected texts, the article investigates how Biss critiques violence and inhumanity while contributing to the representation of the Shoah in Slovakia. Her work navigates the multifaceted roles of victims, perpetrators and bystanders in a culturally diverse and historically complex region.