Federation of Jewish Communities - 08.01.2006

Anti-Semitic Graffiti on Ukrainian State Agency Building

DNEPROPETROVSK, Ukraine (FJC) – Anti-Semitic slogans have again appeared on a concrete wall at one of the busiest intersections of Dnepropetrovsk. The graffiti was left on the wall of “Salut” Works operated by Ukraine’s State Committee for State Material Reserves. In addition to “traditional” anti-Semitic slogans, which have been appearing lately in Dnepropetrovsk in relation with the current conflict in the Middle East, anti-Semites added a new “scrawl:” “Palestine for Arabs; Babiy Yar for Yids.” This was most probably the response of a group of anti-Semites to the pro-Israeli rally which took place last week in Dnepropetrovsk and included thousands of the city’s residents.

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Associated Press - 07.17.2006

Babi Yar memorial damaged

All photos: Sergey Ten/MIGnews.com.ua

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A memorial near the site where Nazis killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews was badly vandalized over the weekend, a Jewish leader said Monday. 

Ukraine's Jewish community condemned the damage as a disturbing act of anti-Semitism. 

Unidentified vandals smashed the inscription plate on the menorah-shaped memorial, erected in 1991 by the Jewish community near the site of the World War II massacre. 

In September 1941, Nazis marched tens of thousands of local Jews to the edge of the Babi Yar ravine and shot them. 

More than 33,700 Jews were killed in a few days, and within months the toll is believed to have reached more than 100,000, including thousands of Red Army prisoners of war and resistance fighters. 

"Police are saying they have no leads, except that they are classifying it as hooliganism - this was not mere hooliganism," said Volodymyr Kadman, spokesman for the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress. He noted that the vandals would have had to come prepared to break the glass covering the inscription plate. 

Vadym Rabynovych, head of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, appealed to authorities to provide 24-hour security for the site. But Kadman said the Jewish community had received no response and was not going to wait. Rabynovych called a special meeting to discuss organizing security on their own and setting up security cameras to monitor the memorial. 

Kiev police officials could not immediately be reached to comment. 

President Viktor Yushchenko has announced tentative plans for a high-profile service this September to remember Babi Yar victims, inviting numerous heads of state, including US President George W. Bush. Ukrainian Jews have welcomed the plans, but said the government needs to do more to combat anti-Semitism after some high profile attacks on Jews last year.

See also:	Ukraine MFA Responds to Incident
	JTA - Babi Yar's Future Provokes Controversy
	MigNews - Babiy Yar Profaned by Vandals
	Interfax  - Unknown persons defiled Menorah in Babiy Yar

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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 07.03.2006

Ukrainian synagogue vandalized

(JTA) -- A Ukrainian synagogue was recently vandalized. No one was hurt in the June 23 incident in which vandals threw stones at a synagogue in Kirovograd.

Two windows were shattered in Kirovograd’s Choral Synagogue in the incident, which was reported to the media a week later.

Local police are investigating the case but no arrests have been reported.

According to local Jewish leaders, the June incident marked the fifth time in 2006 that the synagogue has been attacked.

Vitaly Kakhnov, director of the Kirovograd charitable center Hesed Shlomo, told JTA that the community feels helpless to protect itself against the vandalism. 


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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 06.21.2006

Holocaust memorial in Ukraine vandalized

(JTA) -- A Holocaust monument was vandalized in Ukraine for the second time in less than three months. 

The memorial in Sevastopol was smeared last week with pink paint and swastikas. 

An act of vandalism on the same site took place in late March. At that time, police arrested a 21-year-old man who is to stand trial on charges of hooliganism. 

Acts of vandalism against Jewish sites and institutions in southern Ukraine have been occurring almost monthly during the past two years, said local Jews, who blame the acts on neo-Nazi skinhead groups.


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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 05.04.2006

Ukrainian shul vandalized

(JTA) -- A Ukrainian synagogue was attacked, but no one was hurt.

Vandals threw stones and stole a security camera Monday at the Ner Tamid shul in Simferopol, but no one was hurt. 

A video recording obtained with the shul’s other surveillance camera showed two young men who appeared to be in their late teens who committed the attack. 

Anatoly Gendin, president of the Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Crimea, informed local police about the incident. 

He later told JTA that police failed to show up at the scene promptly. 

Acts of anti-Semitic vandalism have been occurring in southern Ukraine almost every month for the past year, local Jews said. 

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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 04.27.2006

Ukrainian rabbi blasts authorities

(JTA) -- A Holocaust memorial in Odessa was smeared with black paint, large swastikas and an anti-Semitic slogan. The incident took place on the night of April 19-20. Local law enforcement agencies are investigating the case. 

Acts of anti-Semitic vandalism have been occurring in southern Ukraine almost every month for the past year, local Jews said. Rabbi Avraham Wolf, chief rabbi of Odessa and southern Ukraine, blamed authorities for not doing enough to stop the activity of anti-Semitic and xenophobic groups. According to Wolf, the Jewish community "is outraged and alarmed" by the most recent incident and was demanding a serious investigation. "Such incidents have become possible only because of the lack of serious response from the authorities" to previous acts of vandalism, Wolf said. 


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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 04.27.2006

Ukrainian rabbi blasts authorities

(JTA) -- A recent attack on a young Jew in Ukraine was an attempted murder, owing to authorities' lax attitude toward previous anti-Semitic incidents, one of the country's chief rabbis said. 

Chaim Gorbov, a 20-year-old rabbinical student, was attacked by a gang of skinheads in Dnepropetrovsk on April 20. He was stabbed in the chest and suffered head injuries. He left the hospital this week, and doctors have described his condition as satisfactory. 

Rabbi Azriel Haikin, one of the chief rabbis of Ukraine and the main Chabad-Lubavitch authority in the country, said Gorbov was attacked because of his religion, and that "much depends on the reaction of the Ukrainian state and society." "The authorities should take strong measures to stop activities of all groups that incite inter-ethnic and interfaith hatred," Haikin said in a statement this week. 

According to an annual audit of anti-Semitism in Ukraine published earlier this month by the Jewish Agency for Israel, the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks against individuals increased 50 percent last year. 

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NCSJ - 04.24.2006

Graffiti Appears, Students Attacked in Dnepropetrovsk

(all photos: Dnepropetrovsk Jewish Community)
	Graffiti, found on April 19.
Gordov, 20, displays a stab wound	"Kikes [zhids] must be judged for Golodomor, Gulag, NKVD" "and Hitler - Jew Goebbels"

Attacks on Jewish students followed the appearance of anti-Semitic graffiti in Dnepropetrovsk.

According to a spokesman for the Dnepropetrovsk Jewish community, a group of four boys were attacked by approximately 30 skinheads in the city's central square, after leaving the Golden Rose synagogue on the evening of Thursday, April 20. The boys escaped without injury.

Another student, Chaim Gorbov, 20, who came from Israel to lead Passover seders was also attacked. Gorbov, who was walking alone, was stabbed and severely beaten. He was hospitalized, but his injuries are not life-threatening.

Anti-Semitic incidents frequently increase on or about April 20, the birthday of Adolf Hitler, which is celebrated by skinhead groups.

The community plans to hold a press conference at the synagogue to highlight these incidents and urge police to catch and punish the assailants, and to crack down on hate crimes.


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Ynetnews - 04.23.2006

Ukrainian skinheads stab Jew

Thugs mark Hitler's birthday by attacking, stabbing Safed yeshiva students marking Passover in Ukraine

By Miri Chason

An emissary of the Union of Jewish Communities in Russia was the target of an attack by skinheads Saturday evening in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, Ynet has learned.

The man, Haim Gorbov, who studies at a Safed yeshiva, returned to Ukraine as part of a Seder organized by the Union of Jewish Communities in Russia and the former Soviet Union. After Gorbov's condition improved he was released from hospital.

It appears a gang of skinheads in the city sought to mark Hitler's birthday, April 20, by attacking a Jew. Dnepropetrovsk's Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kamintzky said that at first the skinheads tried to attack a group of yeshiva students in the city center, between the synagogue and the yeshiva in which they studied. They managed to escape, however, and the thugs then set upon the 20-year-old Gorbov.

Gorbov, who has Ukrainian citizenship, studied at the Or Avner school and after graduating arrived in Israel in order to study at a yeshiva in Safed. Rabbi Kamintzky said that at first the thugs struck him with a bottle on his head, but when they realized that the hat he was wearing was protecting him against serious injury they stabbed him in the chest and fled.

The President of the Union of Jewish Communities in Russia and the Soviet Union, Lev Laviev, called on the Ukrainian government not to be satisfied with another investigation into an attack on Jews after they take place.

"The rise in anti-Semitic activity demands immediate and determined preventative action. Whoever doesn't invest in fighting skinheads who are attacking minorities will have to deal with them when they increase the level of violence towards the whole of Ukrainian society," said Laviev.

Two months ago security guards thwarted a stabbing attack on the central synagogue in Kiev, Ukraine. The incident took place when a 65 year-old man arrived at the synagogue and asked to meet the rabbis. While speaking to the guards, the man pulled out a knife and said that all Jews should be killed. The guards overpowered the attacker and handed him over to the police.

Meanwhile, Dnepropetrovsk's Chief of Police Alexander Beveilov, who is himself Jewish and who took part in the Passover Seder organized by the Jewish community in the city, promised Rabbi Kamintzky that police would hunt down the skinheads responsible for the attack.

Jewish Agency head Ze'ev Bielsky said that "we are at a situation 60 years after the Holocaust where Jews in Ukraine and Russia live under nonstop harassment.


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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 04.17.2006

Ukrainian Synagogue Attacked

(JTA) -- Several windows were shattered in a Ukrainian synagogue in what is believed to be an anti-Semitic attack. 

Vandals threw stones early Monday at the Choral Synagogue in downtown Kirovograd. No one was hurt. 

Local police are investigating the case but no arrests have been reported. 

According to local Jewish leaders, the incident was only the most recent act of vandalism against Jewish institutions in thee central Ukrainian city during the past few years. 

Vitaly Kakhnov, director of the Kirovograd charitable center Hesed Shlomo, told JTA community members believe this week’s attack was motivated by an anti-Semitic act since it took place on Passover.

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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 04.10.2006

Kiev newspaper editor beaten

(JTA) -- The editor in chief of a Kiev newspaper was severely beaten in what may have been retaliation for articles against anti-Semitism. Vladimir Katzman of the Stolichnye Novosti newspaper was attacked on Saturday evening, when two unidentified young men attacked him with bats in the entrance of his apartment building in Kiev.

Katzman suffered head injuries and a broken hand, and was checked into a hospital where he remained in stable condition, doctors said Sunday.

The attackers didn’t take any valuables, which made at least one Jewish leader think the attack was an anti-Semitic act.

Vadim Rabinovich, the owner of Stolichnye Novosti and the leader of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, said the newspaper recently ran a series of articles against xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Ukraine.

Police are investigating the incident.

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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 03.26.2006

Holocaust memorial vandalized in Ukraine

(JTA) -- A Holocaust monument was vandalized in southern Ukraine. The monument in the city of Sevastopol was smeared with black paint, swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti. The incident took place on the night of March 22-23. Local authorities are investigating the incident.

Acts of anti-Semitic vandalism in the southern Ukraine region of Crimea have been occurring almost every month during the past year, local Jews said.

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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 03.08.2006

Holocaust memorial in Ukraine defaced

(JTA) -- A Holocaust monument was vandalized in southern Ukraine. 

The monument in the town of Feodosia was smeared with paint and anti-Semitic graffiti. The incident took place on the night of Feb. 21-22, but was reported to the media only this week. Local authorities are investigating the incident. 

The monument was opened in September 2003 on the site of a Nazi wartime massacre of 2,000 Jews.

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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 03.07.2006

Yeshiva student attacked in Kiev

(JTA) -- A yeshiva student in Ukraine was attacked in Kiev. 

Azariy Menaker was attacked by three young men Sunday in a Kiev subway station. The student took his air gun and fired at the attackers, who were later detained by the police. 

Rabbi Moshe Azman, one of Ukraine’s chief rabbis, said the student was attacked because he wore Orthodox Jewish garb. In August, a student from the same yeshiva was brutally beaten by a group of skinheads not far from Kiev’s Central Synagogue. 

The student, Mordechai Molozhonov, is still recuperating at a hospital in Israel.

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Jewish Telegraphic Agency- 12.09.2005

Ukrainian shul attacked


(JTA) - Several windows were shattered in an attack on a historic Ukrainian synagogue. 

Vandals threw stones early Wednesday at the shul in Dnepropetrovsk where Levi-Yitzhok Schneerson, father of the last Lubavitcher rebbe, was a rabbi before World War II. 

The shul now houses a Chabad boarding school for boys. No one was hurt, and the vandals ran away before police arrived. 

Police are investigating the case. Some local Jewish leaders believe the attack could be a response to President Viktor Yuschenko’s statement this week condemning xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Ukraine.

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