RJC Monitor - 08.30.2002

 

The Russian Jewish Congress




Information Bulletin # 24  

KEROOR CHAIRMAN OFFERS CONDOLENCES TO FAMILIES OF HELICOPTER CRASH VICTIMS 
Rabbi Zinovy Kogan, Chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia (known by the Russian acronym KEROOR), has expressed his condolences to those who lost their loved ones in a recent helicopter crash in Chechnya. A Mi-26 military helicopter collapsed near the Chechen city of Khankala on August 19, killing 114 out of the 147 people on board. The crash must have been caused by a rebel attack from the ground, investigators say.

The air disaster victims were commemorated during the August 22 evening service at the Moscow Choral Synagogue, as were the 8 people killed in an apartment building blast in the Ostankino neighborhood, in northern Moscow, August 20.

HONORING HOLOCAUST RESCUERS
It has been five years since the Russian Jewish Congress joined the program Hasidei Umot Haolam (Righteous Among the Nations of the World), initiated by Yad Vashem (Israel's Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Memorial Authority) to identify and honor Holocaust rescuers and their next-of-kin. The RJC has now found one more candidate it deems eligible for the title—Vladimir Novikov, a native of Cherkessk, in Russia's North Caucasus. 

During World War II, the parents of Vladimir, then a 16-year-old boy, harbored a Jewish woman,Yevgenia El, and her two children, evacuated from the southern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk. In those days, many of the Cherkessk residents would come to the railroad terminal to offer food and shelter to incoming evacuees. This was how the Novikovs met the El family, and they risked their lives to help it survive under the Nazi occupation. 

In the spring of 1946, the Novikovs received a letter from one of Yevgenia's daughters, Tatyana, in which she addressed them as "Dear Mom and Dad."

In May 2002, ahead of V-E Day, the Vecherny Stavropol newspaper carried a feature about Cherkessk inhabitants who had saved Jews during the Holocaust. Inspired by that article, Fima Feiner, head of the RJC's Stavropol branch, embarked on a search for any of the surviving rescuers, and he was able to find Vladimir. 

At the RJC's request, Semyon Zaslavsky, head of the Dnipropetrovsk-based Tkuma Holocaust Research and Education Center, met with Tatyana El to write down her account of those faraway events. 

Once all necessary paperwork is done (much of it will be about collecting testimonies from Jews rescued by the Novikov family), Vladimir Novikov will become the thirteenth Russian national to be awarded a Righteous certificate of honor.


RJC ENDEAVOR TO REVIVE JEWISH SONG  
The Russian Jewish Congress will contribute to the publication of a Jewish songbook in an effort to revive traditions of Jewish singing in this country. This new edition will be unlike any previous ones. It will offer not only song scores and lyrics in Yiddish or Hebrew (along with Russian transliterations and translations), but also a brief historical commentary to each of the songs and a glossary of keywords.

This will be a compilation of 130 Jewish hits, grouped into the following five categories: folk songs (in Yiddish), modern popular songs (in Hebrew), Sabbath songs, holiday songs, and Russian-language songs. 

The forthcoming songbook will be the first one of its kind, said Vladimir Pliss, head of Russia's Jewish Arts Center. According to him, the New York-based Tara Publications released a number of Jewish songbooks, complete with piano scores, a couple of years ago. But consumers in the Former Soviet Union need a repertory far broader than that offered by the American publishers, he remarked, adding that a cheaper edition would also be preferable to local readerships.


CLEANING URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS OF ANTI-SEMITIC FILTH 
The Jewish community of Voronezh has launched a Lessons of Holocaust project, based on the study of the Soviet Jewry's life under the Nazi occupation and the Stalin regime, our correspondent in that southern Russian city reports. 

Community activists are also preparing a Clean City drive, in association with twenty-two of Voronezh's public organizations. They will join hands to remove anti-Semitic posters and graffiti in public places across the city. The campaign, to run for a month and culminate in a Rock Against Fascism concert, is expected to receive extensive coverage in the local press.