ITAR-TASS - 03.10.2007

Ukrainian police detain Jewish tomb vandals

ODESSA -- Police in Odessa, Ukraine, have detained three young people suspected of having vandalised more than 300 Jewish tombs in the city on the night to February 18, 2007. 

The incident caused serious international reverberations and was condemned by the public. 

Two detainees, both 25 years old, neither work nor study. The third one is a 19-year-old student of a vocational school. They confessed to their crime and showed the place where they had dumped paint cans and gloves. They said they had “only wanted to heck the reaction of society”. 

In February, 302 tombs in the Third Jewish cemetery, a memorial to the victims of Nazism, and a memorial plaque on the house where publicist and public activist Leon Pinsker had lived were vandalised. In all cases, swastikas and “Holocaust congratulations” were stencilled. 

The suspects have been charged under Article 297 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, which envisages up to three years in prison for the desecration of tombs and burial places.

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Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine - 02.21.2007

Statement of the Press Service of the MFA of Ukraine in connection with the acts of vandalism on the Jewish graves at Odessa cemetery

The MFA of Ukraine strongly condemns the acts of vandalism in respect to the Jewish graves at Odessa cemetery committed on February 18, 2007.

Those, who did it, discredit Ukraine as a hospitable home for representatives of all nations and ethnic groups, where there is not place for anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia.

Ukrainian government will do its best for an efficient clearance of this crime and punishment of those, who are guilty, in compliance with the Ukrainian legislation.

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NCSJ - 02.20.2007

NCSJ Condemns Anti-Semitic Desecration in Odessa

PRESS RELEASE

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- NCSJ condemned a Holocaust memorial’s desecration and the defacement of 240 Jewish graves in Odessa, Ukraine and expressed deep concern about continuing anti-Semitic incidents in the city. 

On February 18, vandals desecrated the sites with red swastikas and with the inscription, “Congratulations on the Holocaust.” The Holocaust memorial marks the site where thousands of Jews were killed by the Nazis between 1941-1944.

The same Holocaust memorial was similarly vandalized in April 2006 by swastikas and anti-Semitic epithets, scrawled in black paint.

“We urge the national authorities in Ukraine to work with regional and local governments to conduct a thorough investigation into the ongoing attacks on Jewish community sites, and to apprehend the perpetrators,” said Ed Robin, NCSJ Chairman.

“Adequate protection to Jewish sites must be provided to prevent vandalism from occurring again in this city, and throughout Ukraine.”

NCSJ: Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia, founded in 1971, represents the organized American Jewish community in monitoring and advocating on behalf of the estimated 1.5 million Jews living in the 15 successor states of the former Soviet Union.