Russia’s richest Jew thought European anti-Semitism was a thing of the past. Now, he’s not so sure

Viktor Vekselberg @ JTA:

Last year, my hometown of Drohobych in western Ukraine witnessed the re-opening of a choral synagogue that my father Felix and I helped to rebuild. This synagogue, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, used to be the biggest in all of Eastern Galicia. The dedication ceremony was not meant to be all pomp and circumstance, and still over 5,000 people showed up that day. For Drohobych, with its population of 70,000, this is truly an astronomical figure. Many families traveled from afar to attend the dedication of the synagogue in person.

But only a few weeks later, unidentified criminals smashed the synagogue’s windows. Apparently, the fact that the town now has an active Jewish synagogue that was rebuilt with the money donated by a Russian businessperson made some unhappy.

This is just one example of a hate crime that Ukrainian Jews have witnessed over the past few months. Another Jewish synagogue was desecrated in Lviv. In Kolomyya, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, a memorial wall at a local Jewish cemetery was defiled with graffiti depicting a man throwing the star of David into a trash can. In mid-February, swastikas appeared on the plasma screens in a Kiev shopping mall.

No wonder Jewish communities all over the world were greatly alarmed by the torchlight procession in the Ukrainian capital on New Year’s Eve.

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Ukraine: Anti-Semitic images painted on memorial to desecrated Jewish cemetery

Via JTA:

Unidentified individuals painted anti-Semitic cartoons on a memorial wall in Ukraine that was made of ancient Jewish headstones destroyed by Soviet authorities.

The graffiti found this week in the western city of Kolomyya show a man tossing a Star of David in the trash. The memorial wall commemorates one of three Jewish cemeteries that existed there before they were razed and plundered.

Eduard Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, on Tuesday wrote on Facebook that the act was typical of a recent spate of anti-Semitic vandalism in Ukraine.

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Ukraine: Mall displays Nazi swastika on staircase

Via Jerusalem Post:

A shopping mall in Ukraine that is located on a street named for a collaborator with the Nazis decorated a staircase with a large swastika.

Images and footage from inside the Horodok shopping mall on Kiev’s Bandera Avenue surfaced Monday on Facebook.

They show shoppers climbing up and down the staircase, whose middle-section stairs feature a large swastika locked in a white rhombus encircled by red, similar to Nazi Germany’s flag. The street where the shopping mall is located is named for Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who briefly collaborated with Nazi Germany in its fight against Russia.

His troops are believed to have killed thousands of Jews.

The street used to be Called Moscow Avenue. It was named for Bandera in 2016 despite protests by some Jewish community leaders and Ukrainian Poles, whose community also suffered war crimes by Bandera’s troops.

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Ukraine: Jewish activist: Facebook banned me for posting antisemitic graffiti

Via Jerusalem Post:

 Eduard Dolinksy, a prominent Ukrainian Jewish activist, was banned from posting on Facebook Monday night for a post about antisemitic graffiti in Odessa.

Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, said he was blocked by the social media giant for posting a photo. “I had posted the photo which says in Ukrainian ‘kill the yid’ about a month ago,” he says. “I use my Facebook account for distributing information about antisemitic incidents and hate speech and hate crimes in Ukraine.”

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Now Dolinsky’s account has disabled him from posting for thirty days, which means media, law enforcement and the local community who rely on his social media posts will receive no updates.

(...)

Dolinksy says that he has been targeted in the past by nationalists and anti-semites who oppose his work. Facebook has banned him temporarily in the past also, but never for thirty days. “The last time I was blocked, the media also reported this and I felt some relief.

It was as if they stopped banning me. But now I don’t know – and this has again happened. They are banning the one who is trying to fight antisemitism. They are banning me for the very thing I do.”

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Ukraine: Like the Dreyfus Affair: An innocent Jew released from prison

Via Jerusalem Post:

A tragic story has come to a happy conclusion. Israel Repkin, a Jewish Ukrainian who had been imprisoned for years on false charges of attacking an elderly woman, was released from confinement recently. He won his release because the central witness in his case admitted to lying and framing Repkin after having been badly mistreated by the government.

"The man, whose name is Sartzinsky, was himself a suspect and framed Repkin. Afterwards, he admitted that he lied, but the prosecutors did not pay attention," said the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Azman, who was involved in Repkin's release. "Regarding the woman who was attacked, who said she saw Repkin in her house in 2006, there is proof that he was out of the country at the time."


The head of the parliamentary friendship with Israel committee, Georg Logvinskyi, a Jewish Ukrainian, was also a critical figure in Repkin's release. "They caught a Jew from a small city, brought him to a police station and beat him so that he would admit to the crime. For four and a half years there was no judgement. The accused approached me asking for help, because they were holding him in a temporary prison in very harsh conditions. I traveled to the prison and found his health in a critical situation. I was in contact with the prison and posted bail for him, but the judge rejected the request. The chief rabbi of Ukraine also became involved, and the Jewish community rallied to his cause."

"They accused him because he was a Jew," Logvinskyi said. "He didn't do anything wrong."

"In 2012, Israel Repkin was accused of stealing a telephone from a nearly-90-year-old woman," explained Shimon Briman, a journalist and historian who is an expert in Israel-Ukraine relations. "Despite the evidence that he was not in the country at the time, Repkin was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In the Kiev Jewish community I heard the same voices over and over again: 'Such a cruel judgement could only have been given for antisemitic reasons.'"

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Ukraine: Jews want to drown Ukraine in blood, Ukraine's Military Prosecutor says

Via Newsweek:

In an extensive interview with the Ukrainian news outlet Insider, Anatoliy Matios, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in which he implied that Jews want to drown ethnic Slavs in blood.

Referring to Alexander Parvus, a Belarussian-born Marxist theoretician who was active in Germany’s Social Democratic Party in the late 19th century, and who also happened to be Jewish, Matios claimed that Jews can be found financing all great conflicts.

“In each war, there is always a Parvus, who brought Lenin money for a revolution which flooded Slavs with blood for decades. Parvus was also Jewish. In this case, they want to do the same to Ukraine,” Matios told the Insider.

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Ukrainian mayor, diplomat caught engaging in antisemitic rhetoric

Via Jerusalem Post:

 Amid international pressure on Ukraine over its perceived tolerance of antisemitism, a local mayor and a diplomat were documented engaging hate speech against Jews.

Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, posted a video on Facebook Monday of Mayor Vlodimyr Moskal’s address to city councilmen in which he railed against Jews. Moskal is mayor of the village of Skole, located 60 miles southwest of Lviv.

Quoting Henry Ford’s antisemitic writing about Jewish schemes for world domination, Moskal said: “A lot of that work is devoted to the death of the goyim,” Hebrew for non-Jews. “Christians, Arabs, Buddhists, they are not people to them after their reaching world domination, which they are clearly trying to do through cosmopolitanism and liberalism in order to destroy all nations, to leave the political nation, to mix everyone into one lump, migrants, blacks,” the mayor said. He also called the government, whose prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, is Jewish, “Muscovite Jews”– an insult in a country where anti-Russian sentiment is rife.

Separately, screenshots shared online show that Vasyl Marushchynets, who works at Ukraine’s consulate in Hamburg, Germany, blamed Jews for World War II and said “death to the anti-fascists” on his private Facebook page, Reuters reported Monday. Marushchynets and the Hamburg consulate did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but Ukraine’s foreign ministry confirmed his suspension.

“Antisemitism and those who stir up inter-ethnic discord can have no place either in civilized society or in the foreign ministry,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Twitter.

Ukraine in recent weeks has seen a spate of antisemitic incidents, including vandalism at two monuments for Holocaust victims. One of the monuments was firebombed, and on another unidentified parties wrote neo-Nazi slogans.

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Ukraine: Prohibition of book over passage detailing wartime murder of Jewish children by Ukrainian militia

Via The Guardian:

Leading British historian Antony Beevor has described a Ukrainian ban on his award-winning book Stalingrad as “utterly outrageous”. The bestselling history, winner of the 1999 Samuel Johnson prize, tells of the battle for the Russian city during the second world war. A Russian translation was one of 25 titles included on a banned list issued by Ukrainian authorities last week, alongside books by authors including Boris Akunin and Boris Sokolov.

In 2016, Ukraine passed a law that banned books imported from Russia if they contained “anti-Ukrainian” content, with an “expert council” assessing titles for such content. It is almost four years since Russian president Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, during which time around 10,000 people have died, and more than 1.7m have been displaced.

Serhiy Oliyinyk, head of the Ukrainian Committee for State TV and Radio Broadcasting’s licensing and distribution control department, told Radio Free Europe (RFE) that the ban was imposed because of a passage that details how 90 Jewish children were shot by Ukrainian militia “to save the feelings of the Sonderkommando”, the work units made up of the Nazis’ death camp prisoners.

“It’s a provocation,” he told RFE. “When we checked the sources he used, we found out he used reports of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. It was enough to discuss the issue at expert council and we are happy they supported us.” 

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Ukraine: "Jews out, Ukraine for Ukrainians", antisemitic graffiti on Jewish buildings in Odessa

Via JTA:

Unidentified individuals painted anti-Semitic graffiti on three Jewish institutions in the city of Odessa in southern Ukraine.

The graffiti, including the words “toasting the Holocaust” on the gate of Odessa’s Holocaust museum, were discovered Monday. The city’s Brodsky Synagogue had the words: “Jews out, Ukraine for Ukrainians” written on its exterior fence.

An offensive symbol appeared on a gate adjacent to the Beit Grand Jewish Community Center. It and the other two graffiti featured the symbol of the Azov Battalion, a National Guard of Ukraine regiment that was set up after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

Last month, an anti-Semitic slur was painted on the wall of a Jewish charity in western Ukraine.

(...)

The incidents follow several cases of death threats and vandalism against Jewish institutions in western Ukraine, including at cemeteries and synagogues.

The incidents have taken place amid a divisive public debate in Ukraine over the conferring of state honors on nationalists who incited hatred against Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, including for some who collaborated with the Nazis.

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Ukraine: Menorah sprayed with 'animal blood' in Kiev

Via Ynet News:

A menorah base in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev was sprayed with blood Sunday, just several days after a swastika had been scrawled on the same nine-lamp candelabrum. According to one estimate, the menorah was defaced with animal blood.

Ukraine's Jewish community filed a complaint with the local police, who launched an investigation into the incident, which likely took place at around 7 pm Sunday in the neighborhood of Podil.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was born in the same neighborhood, which was home to the only active synagogue during the Soviet era.

"Whoever renames streets after leaders who murdered Jews shouldn’t be surprised by the targeting of a menorah and Jewish symbols today," said Ukrainian-born activist Alex Tentzer. 

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Ukraine: Odessa celebrates Bob Dylan's Jewish roots this weekend

Via Jewish Telegraphic Agency: 

Bob Dylan

Some 950 people are expected to gather over this weekend for Limmud FSU Ukraine, the biggest event geared towards the Jewish community in the country. The event will take place in Odessa, one of the most important cities of Jewish and Zionist movement’s history in the former Soviet Union. Today there are about 400,000 Jews living in Ukraine, with more than 45,000 in Odessa. 

Limmud FSU Ukraine, the dynamic and pluralistic Jewish festival of culture, creativity and learning, will feature an array of more than 180 world-class speakers from around the world on a multitude of subjects ranging from art, to Jewish culture and tradition, literature, music, theater, history, politics, business and lifestyle.

The event will feature a special ceremony and a concert celebrating Bob Dylan, one of the most prominent Jewish composers and musicians of our time. Dylan’s paternal mother, Anna Zimmerman, together with her husband Zigman, emigrated from Odessa to the US in 1910. The event will also include an exhibition on Dylan’s life “Forever young: behind Dylan's revolution and legacy”, created by the Museum of Diaspora in Tel Aviv, and presented by one of its curators, Amitai Achiman.

Special recognition will be given to the 120th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress of 1897, to be celebrated this year, including a concert and several activities relating to the World Zionist Organization, with the participation of WZO Chair, Avraham Duvdevani. A commemorative plaque will be unveiled on the house where the distinguished Hebrew poet, Shaul Tchernichovsky, lived, in the framework of an official ceremony made possible by the efforts of Nativ and WZO.

“The Ukrainian-Jewish community is among the most thriving Jewish communities in the world, while the city of Odessa is one of the most important cities in Jewish history. We confidently expect that this Limmud FSU 11th festival in Ukraine will be an important part in the life of the Jewish community,” said founder Chaim Chesler, “and we look forward to an inspiring gathering, especially the celebration of Bob Dylan’s Jewish roots in Odessa.”

Among the presenters will be Israel's ambassador to Ukraine Eliav Belotserkovsky; Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG) Vice-President for External Relations and former Israeli Ambassador to Russia, Dorit Golender; Executive Director  of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, Haim Ben Yakov; Nativ's countrty director for Ukraine Gennady Polischuk; Director of The Ukrainian Institute for the Study of the Holocaust Tkuma, Igor Shchupak; Board Member of Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter Adrian Karatnycky, popular Russian satirist and writer, Victor Shenderovich, and many more.

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Ukraine: Disgraceful celebration of anti-Semitic nationalist leader

Via European Jewish Press:

Symon Petliura

The city of  Vinnitsa, in west central Ukraine, once a historic center of Jewish life in the country, has decided to celebrate an anti-Semitic nationalist leader and to unveil a monument in his honor this weekend.

Symon Petliura and his Ukrainian People’s Republic are blamed for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews in programs under his watch in 1918-1921.

The memorial for Symon Petliura was unveiled Saturday in Vinnitsa, on Defender of Ukraine Day, a national holiday. It is located in an area once known as Yerusalimka, or Jerusalem, and located next to a small synagogue that is still in operation.

In a statement, the World Jewish Congress denounced the move to celebrate Petliura.

WJC CEO and Executive Vice President Robert Singer said in a statement: "The World Jewish Congress is distressed by the Vinnitsa municipality’s disgraceful and regrettable decision to celebrate the anti-Semitic nationalist leader Symon Petliura as a 'Defender of Ukraine' and by Vinnitsa Regional Chairman Valery Korovy’s description of him as an 'honest man'."

"Petilura was anything but an honest man. He was a cruel barbarian, indisputably responsible for pogroms in which 35,000-40,000 Jews were murdered."

"He and his Ukrainian People’s Republic were more than just Ukrainian nationalists - they were also avowed and brutal anti-Semites, intoxicated by the thrill of carrying out unimaginably vicious and inhumane crimes against innocent people."

"It is inconceivable that a man, who today we would not hesitate to call a terrorist, should be honored in the very same city in which he and his regime tried to wipe out a rooted and strong Jewish population."

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Ukraine: Anti-Semitic vandals caught by police

Via Arutz Sheva 7:

Ukrainian Police have arrested an anti-Semitic gang responsible for a long string of attacks against Jewish worshippers at the grave of Rabbi Nachman in Uman. Thousands of Breslov hasidim and others visit Uman for the High Holidays every year. 

The gang, which called themselves 'Torpedo', had been receiving instruction from a manager in Russia, who paid them money per attack in an attempt to stir up anti-Jewish sentiment in Ukraine. 

The gang was responsible for throwing a grenade at Jews in September, which injured a 13-year-old boy. 

In 2016, the gang had thrown a pig’s head and red paint into Rabbi Nachman's grave. Photograph close-ups of the pig’s head showed a swastika carved into the animal’s forehead. The attackers also sprayed tear gas and shouted anti-Semitic epithets during the assault, which left Jewish visitors to the tomb shaken.

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Ukraine: Firebomb hurled at synagogue in Lviv

Via Haaretz:

Unidentified individuals hurled a firebomb at a synagogue in Lviv and, in a separate incident, wrote anti-Semitic slogans on another Jewish community building in the western Ukrainian city.

The incident involving a firebomb occurred on June 30 but was discovered only Monday, according to the Strana news site. The perpetrators may have aimed the firebomb at a window of the synagogue on Mikhovsky Street but missed it, hitting the building facade, the director of the Chesed-Arieh Jewish group, Ada Dianova, told Strana.

The contents of the firebomb fell to the foot of the building and burned there, resulting in no damage to the interior, she added. No one was hurt in the incident.

The anti-Semitic slogans painted on a former building of the community on Sholem Aleichem Street included the words” “Down with Jewish power” and: “Jews, remember July 1,” an apparent reference to a pogrom that took place in Lviv on that date in 1941.

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Ukraine: Desecration of the grave of the daughter of Rebbe Nachman in Kremenchug

Via CFCA:

In Kremenchug, Poltava region,  vandals again desecrated the grave of the eldest daughter of the Holy tzaddik, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav – Sary.  (...) 

It is noted that the house on the burial site of the daughter of the Holy tzaddik – Sary in Kremenchug has been defiled for the fourth time. 

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Ukraine: Vandals desecrate hasidic rebbe's grave

Via CFCA:

Storozhynets - The grave of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Hager, a grandson of the first Vizhnitz Rebbe, known as the Storozhynets Rebbe, was vandalized in the Ukraine. The grave had only last year been located, renovated and reconstructed.

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Ukrainian general calls for destruction of Jews

View Jewish Chronicle:

In the latest of a series of highly public antisemitic statements by prominent figures in Ukraine, a retired Ukrainian general affiliated with the country’s intelligence services this week called for the destruction of his country’s Jewish community.

In a post since deleted from Facebook, Vasily Vovk - a general who holds a senior reserve rank with the Security Service of Ukraine, the local successor to the KGB - wrote that Jews “aren't Ukrainians and I will destroy you along with [Ukrainian oligarch and Jewish lawmaker Vadim] Rabinovych. I'm telling you one more time - go to hell, zhidi [kikes], the Ukrainian people have had it to here with you.”

"Ukraine must be governed by Ukrainians,” he wrote.

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Ukraine: Holocaust monument desecrated in Ternopil

Via CFCA:

Petrikov - On the outskirts of the village Petrikov near Ternopil, unknown has committed an act of vandalism on the grave of the victims of the Holocaust.

The monument and the wreaths he poured an oily liquid. Also on a place there is a broken vessel, which probably was an unknown substance.

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Ukraine opens criminal probe against 94-year-old Jewish WWII hero for killing Nazi collaborator

Via Ynet News:

Ukrainian authorities have decided to open a criminal investigation into a 94-year-old Jewish WWII hero who is being accused of killing a Nazi collaborator.

Col. Boris Steckler was warned that he is expected to stand trial for killing a Ukrainian nationalist in 1952.

Steckler was a senior officer in the Soviet Army and after the war was appointed as an officer in the KGB and was responsible for capturing Nazis and collaborators in western Ukraine.

During a battle in the Rivne Oblast in western Ukraine, Steckler was involved in a confrontation with nationalists who cooperated with the Nazis. During the confrontation, a man by the name of Neil Hasiewicz, who was a propagandist and district judge during the war, was shot and killed.

Local nationalist groups recently filed a complaint against Steckler, accusing him of responsibility for the assassination of Hasiewicz—a fact that Steckler does not deny.

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Ukraine: Party amused by jokes about hanged Jews

Via CFCA:

Kiev - a new antisemitic scandal in Ukraine: Viktor Varganov, a member of the Academy of Science, entertained the conference of the Party of Batkivshina led by Yulia Tymoshenko, with jokes about Jews, which were met by long applauses.

"Jews of the wrong kind stand above us! Honorable colleagues, by saying this I mean that in every village, in every area, they have to be raised as they did in some of our counties. As they say, if sport could have been put to good use, then five Jews would be hanged on each pole. Don’t forget, please forgive me in the name of God, but hurray Ukraine" announced Vergonov, a member of the Ukrainian Union of journalists and director of the National Library of Agriculture.

As noted on his Facebook page, Eduard Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, the jokes were not only greatly appreciated by head of the Batkievshina party, Yulia Tymoshenko, but also by the leader of the nationalist party Svoboda, Oleg Tejnybuk, who was present in the audience. Dolinsky posted the videotape recording of the academy member as he told his joke to the applauding audience, drawing a wave of vehement criticism.

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