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.read more
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.
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.
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.
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.
A theater in Kiev provoked protest Tuesday from the local Jewish community after displaying a sign above its entrance proclaiming the title of an upcoming play, “The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret.”read more
The sign was put up a day earlier, while Israel was marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, and drew criticism from the chief rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Azman, who posted pictures of the theater on his Facebook page.
“This horror (I cannot find another way to describe it) was hung in the center of Kiev yesterday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, in the city where Babi Yar is located, opposite the central synagogue!” he wrote, referring to the Nazi execution by firing squads of nearly 34,000 Jews in a Kiev ravine, on September 29-30, 1941.
The play, written by Jewish Canadian playwright Jonathan Garfinkel in 2005 and later updated, is a satirical look at the trials of John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland during World War II. Demjanjuk, who moved to the US after the war, was tried in both Israel and Germany for his alleged activities.
“And tickets for the Friday performance are sold,” Azman continued. “I do not know who needs this provocation, but I declare that we, the Jewish community, will do everything to remove this provocation immediately!”
Azman urged people to protest against the sign, and three hours later posted further pictures showing it being taken down.
“Thanks to all non-indifferent people and state structures for an instant reaction,” he wrote, “the sign was dismantled.”
Just before the last day of Passover, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Deitsch died in Israel. The well-known Chabad rabbi was injured in a brutal attack in October 2016 in Zhitomir, Ukraine, where he was savagely beaten by bunch of thugs. Rabbi Deitsch was only 64 years old. His death has become a tragic symbol of antisemitism in Ukraine — a phenomenon that the world prefers to ignore.
Antisemitism is thriving in Ukraine, as is ultra-nationalism and hatred against all minority groups. One needs only to watch Ukrainian television coverage praising neo-Nazi rallies to discover what the country has become. But the resurgence of antisemitism here has only been made possible by the world’s indifference and inaction.
During the last six months, there have been scores of hate crimes in Ukraine. When it comes to the Jewish community, these crimes include the desecration of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s grave in Uman, which was ‘crowned’ by a pig’s head with a swastika carved on it. This and other antisemitic attacks were documented with photos and detailed descriptions. All of them were reported to the Ukrainian police. The result? Nothing. And the world’s reaction? Nada.
The desecration of Jewish buildings and memorials has become quite common in Ukraine and, in some cases, the vandalism is repeated many times per year.
Simultaneously, there has been a disgusting attempt to rewrite history throughout the country. In a macabre-like episode, Ukrainian nationalists are trying to whitewash the Babi Yar massacre that took place during the Holocaust, and the country’s officials — including Kiev’s mayor — are allowing it. Ukraine is also erecting memorials and setting up exhibitions to honor the perpetrators of the most vicious antisemitic attacks that took place during the Holocaust.
One such exhibition honored the ‘exploits’ of Ivan Rohach, who was the editor of the Ukrainian ultra-nationalistic OUN newspaper; he also repeatedly called for the extermination of the Jews. A memorial was also established to honor Yelena Teliga, a fierce antisemite who demonized Jews and helped instigate the Babi Yar massacre.
Daily life in Ukraine is dangerous for Jews, and rabbis and community leaders are afraid to speak out about it — for fear of making the situation worse.
Amid all of this, the world has been silent.
A Ukrainian lawmaker and war hero used a word usually translated as “kikes” in complaining that Jews wield excessive power in her country.
Nadiya Savchenko, a fighter jet pilot who was elected to parliament in 2014 while she was still being held as a prisoner of Russia, made the statements on Saturday during a televised interview for the 112 station and insisted they were not indicative of anti-Semitic bias.
Savchenko was asked to address criticism that in a television interview earlier this month, she failed to condemn the anti-Semitic statements of a caller with whom she seemed to agree.
During the 112 interview on Saturday, which was conducted in Ukrainian, Savchenko said, “I have nothing against Jews. I do not like ‘kikes.’” She later said Jews possess “80 percent of the power when they only account for 2 percent of the population.”
In expressing neutrality to Jews, she used the word “evreiv,” which speakers both of Ukrainian and Russian is a neutral designation. But later she used the term “zhidiv,” which in Russian is a pejorative for Jews, akin to “kike” in English.
Some Ukrainians claim the word “zhid” is the standard designation for a Jew in their language, though leaders of the Ukrainian Jewish community insist it is offensive to Jews in both languages.
In the same interview, Savchenko cited the fact that Ukraine’s prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, is Jewish and claimed that the country’s president, Petro Poroshenko, also has Jewish roots along with Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and a leader of the nation’s Orange Revolution.
The ancestries of both Proshenko and Timoshenko have been the subject of speculation in Ukraine and beyond.
During the earlier interview on March 21 for OneNews, Savchenko agreed in principle with a caller who inveighed against a “Jewish takeover of Ukraine.”
She replied: “Indeed, part of the ruling establishment in Ukraine does not possess distinctly Ukrainian blood and we need to talk about it and act.”
Vandals desecrated a Holocaust monument in Ternopil, Censor.NET reports. This was announced by Ukrainian Jewish Committee director Eduard Dolinsky on his Facebook page.
Zhytomyr - the looting of Jewish mass graves from the days of the Holocaust have become a widespread epidemic in the country, this emerges from reports in Ukraine. The looters desecrate the graves looking in search of gold teeth, jewelry and skulls which are sold openly in urban markets. In recent years dozens of such cases have been reported in cities in the Zhytomyr Oblast (province) in the west of the country, but most looters are never brought before justice.
The president of the European forum for Russian speaker Jews, Mikhail Ihodnin, says that Ukraine has many mass graves where thousands of Jews were buried who had been killed during the Holocaust years. “We are making efforts to finance concrete and maintenance works to prevent looting and to erect monuments so people would understand the meaning of the place, but unfortunately we do not have enough resources” the president of the forum said.
Secret services of the Russian Federation are spreading anti-Semitic sentiments in Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada deputy Anton Herashchenko said, speaking during a live interview broadcast by the Kyiv-based 112.ua TV channel in Kyiv on Jan. 23 evening.
“You probably remember the news in November that a pig’s head was left on the tombstone of Tsadik, who is revered by Jews, in Uman. There was also the news that anti-Semitic graffiti appeared in Chernivtsi during the visit of Israel’s Knesset speaker. Anti-Semitic books were also distributed in November and December of last year. I can say that these incidents are not coincidental. They are part of a concerted effort by Russian special forces to sow anti-Semitic sentiments in Ukraine,” Herashchenko said.
Ukrainian nationalists in Kiev chanted “Jews out” in German at a New Year’s Day march celebrating the birthday of a Nazi collaborator whose troops killed thousands of Jews.
Thousands attended the event in the center of the Ukrainian capital celebrating Stepan Bandera, a leader of Ukraine’s nationalist movement in the 1930s and ’40s. They held up his portrait while an unidentified person shouted the anti-Semitic slogan on a loudspeaker, prompting many participants to repeat it, a video published by the Federal News Agency showed.
The Obama administration on Friday allowed the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements, defying pressure from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as well as Israel and several U.S. senators who urged Washington to use its veto.
The resolution was put forward at the 15-member council for a vote on Friday by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal a day after Egypt withdrew it under pressure from Israel and the U.S. president-elect. Israel and Trump had called on the United States to veto the measure.
It was adopted with 14 votes in favor, to a round of applause. It is the first resolution the Security Council has adopted on Israel and the Palestinians in nearly eight years.
Worshippers praying by the tomb of the founder of the Breslov Hasidic sect, Rebbe Nachman, say the rabbi’s resting place in the Ukrainian town of Uman was violated early Wednesday morning in a grotesque anti-Semitic attack.read more
Witnesses say a gang of Ukrainian vandals desecrated the tomb compound at approximately 2:00 a.m. local time, throwing a pig’s head and red paint into the building. Photograph close-ups of the pig’s head show a swastika was carved into the animal’s forehead. The attackers sprayed tear gas and shouted anti-Semitic epithets during the assault which left Jewish visitors to the tomb shaken.
“We were saved from murder only by the grace of heaven,” said of the witnesses.
“It was really frightening,” said a second witness, who works at the compound. “We’ve suffered from anti-Semitism here in the past, but this attack crossed a line and we’re all still in shock. We’ve started to clean the place, and the police have been called, but as far as I know, there haven’t been any arrests.”
Uzhgorod - Saturday night (November 27) vandals threw red paint on the monument commemorating the Holocaust in Uzhgorod.
The vandals also left hundreds of leaflets with the words "Remember who were the ones who killed your people" ( "Помни, кто убивал твой народ") near the monument located next to the Transcarpathian Regional Philharmonic Hall, which once was a Jewish synagogue.
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| Photo: Miriam |
Unidentified individuals wrote “death to the Jews” on the main synagogue of a city in Ukraine that earlier this month saw the rededication of another Jewish house of worship.
The hateful graffiti was discovered last week on the façade of the Central Synagogue in Chernivtsi, a city located 255 miles southwest of Kiev, a leader of the local Jewish community said.
Earlier this month, hundreds of Orthodox Jews convened at the Chernivtsi district of Sadhora of for the rededication of a synagogue that was built in the 19th century by followers of the influential Hasidic rabbi Israel Friedman of Ruzhyn. It had fallen into disrepair decades ago.
“It’s a shame to admit that when the country is dealing with war, instead of uniting society, some provocateurs are trying to sow ethnic hatred,” Ilya Hoach, leader of the local Jewish charity Miriam, wrote on Facebook, along with photos of the vandalism. The perpetrators also drew a cross on the synagogue.
Dnepropetrovsk – the police in Dnepropetrovsk opened an investigation after a young Jewish man was attacked and lightly wounded by antisemitic youngsters in the center of Dnepropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
The young man was walking near the “Menorah Center” in the center of Dnepropetrovsk, a town located on the Dnieper River, southeast of the capital Kiev. The “Menorah Center” is the largest Jewish community center in the world. Two young men suddenly approached him and began to insult him. They did not stop there, but also beat him, threw him to the ground, kicked him and he suffered injuries.
Hearing the man shouts, more Jews arrived to help him escape and the two young attackers fled the scene. The guy was taken to a local hospital and later discharged. After he left the hospital he filed a complaint at the local police.
