Belarus 2006

 

Several antisemitic incidents were recorded in Belarus in 2006, mainly desecration of Holocaust memorials and Jewish community facilities and anti-Jewish incitement in local publications. It is apparent that the authorities are attempting to reduce Jewish influence and presence in the civil life of the country to a minimum, as part of its general policy of russifying Belarus. Many leaders of other religions and nationalities voiced their support for the Jewish community's appeal to the authorities against neo-Nazi desecration of religious symbols and antisemitic incitement.

 

The Jewish Community

According to the last census held in 1999, there were 29,000 Jews in Belarus (out of a population of about 9 million). Local Jewish organizations claim there are 50,000 Jews in the country, while the Jewish Agency estimates that about 70,000 people in Belarus are entitled to immigrate to Israel.

The Jewish Religious Union (headed by Iurii Dorn), ChaBaD Lubavich and Reform Judaism represent the Jewish religion in Belarus. There is also the Karlin religious community in Pinsk, headed by Rabbi Moshe Fima, with a synagogue and separate boarding schools for boys and girls. The Union of Jewish Organizations and Communities, headed by Leonid Levin, has branches in 24 cities and publishes the monthly newspaper Aviv. Other Jewish publications in Belarus are Berega (a monthly published by the Jewish Religious Union), Gesher (of the Bobruisk Jewish community) and Karlin (of the Pinsk Jewish community). The annual journal Mishpokha is issued in Vitebsk. The Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camps Inmates, the Union of World War II Veterans, the Holocaust Foundation in Minsk (with a branch in Brest) and the sports organization Maccabi are among other Jewish organizations in Belarus. Cheseds (charitable organizations) provide services such as food, homecare and medical care.

The Museum of History and Culture of Belarusian Jews was opened in Minsk in 2002. It holds educational events, and engages in teaching and researching the Holocaust and the history and culture of the Jewish people. The Jewish school education system consists of several Sunday schools run by the Union of Jewish Organizations and Communities and the Jewish Agency; two Reform Judaism Sunday schools (in Bobruisk and Grodno); and one Sunday school for Jewish deaf children. There are also Jewish classes in School No. 132 in Minsk (supported by ORT). The Jewish Religious Union supports Bnei Akiva schools in Minsk; ChaBaD has two elementary schools (in Minsk and Bobruisk); and the Karlin-Stolin congregation funds the segregated boarding school in Pinsk. There is practically no state-supported Jewish higher education in Belarus. In 2004 the International Humanitarian Institute in Minsk merged with the International Relations Faculty at Belarus State University and was divided between three departments: Jewish studies, design and foreign languages. About a year later, the Jewish Studies Department was converted into a cultural studies department, specializing in three fields: American studies and English language, German studies and German language, and Hebraistic Studies (Hebraic culture and the Hebrew language). Since the Cultural Studies Department duplicates the Belarus State University of Culture, it will eventually be closed, leading to the complete disappearance of Jewish higher education in the country.

Toward the year 2006, it became apparent that the authorities were attempting to reduce Jewish influence and presence in the social life of the country to a minimum, as part of its general policy of russification of Belarus.

 

political background

Belarus' policy on human rights and the development of civil society resembles that of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Issues such as the preservation and development of national minority culture and identity are not on the authorities' agenda due to the overwhelming influence of the Orthodox (Pravoslav) Church and corrupt officialdom.

During the last ten years, the role of the Committee for National and Religious Affairs has been reduced to the registration of religious and national minority organizations and groups. The country's national minorities are forbidden to run any activity in their own language. In addition, because there are no large concentrations of national minorities, their languages are disappearing and a natural process of assimilation is taking place. The ban covers independent schools and kindergartens, publications, theaters and cultural centers, and programs on state radio or television. Moreover, although legally speaking, the state must grant financial support for the development of national minority cultures, this does not happen in reality; consequently, although some minorities are quite large (such as Poles, 555,000, and Ukrainians, 350,000), assimilation is actually enforced. Property of religious communities confiscated by the Soviets and Nazis has been restituted solely to Christian communities, mostly Orthodox (Pravoslav) ones.

An assessment of the religious situation in Belarus shows that a crisis of freedom of religious expression is developing in the country. The situation worsened after the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations was adopted in 2002. The authorities have been trying to tighten their control over the spiritual life of citizens, by preferring some confessions while restraining and banning others. For example, the state supports the Belarusian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, by direct grants, among other benefits, while placing restrictions on most other religious movements by rejecting their application for registration, without which a community cannot function; it also suppresses the activity of foreign missionaries through visa restrictions and deportation; and prohibits the holding of religious events in facilities not registered as halls of worship.

Belarus' attitude toward the Jewish population (like its position toward other national minorities) derives from Russian great power chauvinism. Although state antisemitism (banning certain professions, numerus clausus in schools, etc) does not exist officially it is not absent altogether. Thus, Belarus' policy toward the country's Jews corresponds to the well-known slogan from the French Revolution: "Everything must be refused to the Jews as a nation; everything must be granted them as individuals."

 

Antisemitic Manifestations

Antisemites in Belarus are inspired by neo-Nazism, whose leaders and ideologists are based mostly in Russia. While under the Soviet regime, Russian and Soviet imperialism, the chauvinism of the Orthodox Church and open antisemitism were cornerstones of the ideology of Nazi groups, nowadays devout Christians, regarded by the neo-pagan neo-Nazis as members of a Jewish sect, are their worst enemies. Thus, in addition to Jewish institutions, Christian (and Muslim) sacred places and memorials to Stalinism are their main targets.

Several antisemitic violent incidents took place in Belarus in 2006. For example, five tombstones in the old Jewish cemetery of Sverzhan were broken in mid-September, while on 9 November, swastikas and the slogan "Beat the Yids" were painted on the walls of the Israeli Informational Cultural Center in Minsk. Condemning the latter incident, the Israeli embassy in Belarus asked the authorities to try and find the perpetrators. Initially, the police refused to open an investigation, claiming that the incident was not "a deliberate act of fomenting national enmity"; however, following the embassy's appeal to the interior ministry and the general prosecutor's office, they opened an inquiry on 1 December. In late November, swastikas, Stars of David on gallows and threatening slogans were painted on the fence of the Minsk House of Charity of the Orthodox Church.

As in previous years, Belarus publications continued to inflame national and religious conflicts. On 18 January, basing itself on neo-Nazi sources the state newspaper Vechernii Mogilev claimed that the yeast used for baking kosher bread is made out of human bones.

The Russian Orthodox Initiative (Minsk) published a book, A Verdict on Those Who Kill Russia, which was distributed widely in Belarus and Russia. This book is a collection of neo-Stalinist articles attacking globalization, the US, the Jews and Zionism. Although this publishing house has been issuing books with openly neo-Nazi content for seven years, the authorities have never tried to limit its activity. Attempts of local human rights organizations to prosecute it or revoke its publishing license have failed.

Following publication of the book, the Russian Orthodox Eparchy canceled its contracts with the Initiative and sold its 70 percent share hold, dating from 2004. On 23 June, a group of senior officials of the Orthodox Church published a document, "The Pastor's Admonition of the Minsk Eparchial Council," which accused the publisher V. Chertovich of spreading "odious nationalist and antisemitic information," and supporting neo-Bolshevik views and antisemitism. Nevertheless, the prosecutor's office continued in its refusal to initiate proceedings against the publishing house for inciting ethnic hatred.

The Russian Orthodox Book shop, owned by Russian Orthodox Initiative, continued to sell antisemitic literature and videocassettes, such as the book Jewish Fascism - Genocide of the Russian People, and the movie Russia with a Knife in Her Back: Jewish Fascism and Genocide of the Russian People. Most of their stock is imported from Russia, but some is locally produced; the book Demons in Russia, written by a Ph.D. candidate, V. Zelenevskii, and published privately, is one of the more odious antisemitic volumes that appeared in 2006.

On 10 August, the private newspaper Vitebskii Kur'er received a threat letter signed by the RNE (Russian National Unity − see, for example, ASW 2004), containing a caricature entitled "Lets Clean Russia," showing a young man in uniform adorned with swastikas standing near a Pravoslav Church. He is holding a man with a Star of David on his chest and dollars hanging out of his pockets. The letter urged the newspaper to stop publishing articles opposing the government and the president of Belarus since he is fighting the 'Yids' and liberals who are trying to enslave the Russian people. Responding to the newspaper's complaint in September, the police said they had no suspect and were investigating.

In April the prosecutor's office in Mogilev issued an official warning to members of the Alef Jewish musical group for alleged infraction of the law concerning the propagation of religion. The group were accused of employing 'Jewish religious symbols' - Stars of David and menorahs − when they played at a Purim party in a Jewish kindergarten in the city in March. The text of the warning included citations from the antisemitic book How Antisemites Are Made, by Deacon Andreii Kuraev, which claims, inter alia, that the Purim festival celebrates the alleged genocide the Jews inflicted on the ancient Persians. The public prosecutor charged the teacher Liudmila Izakson-Bolotovskaia with violating the children's rights and said that the TV coverage of the festivities was illegal Jewish propaganda. In July, following protests by the Union of Jewish Communities and Organizations in Belarus, the prosecutor's office revoked the warning.

 

Attitudes towards the Holocaust

Practically all official literature, including history textbooks and encyclopedias, ignores or mentions only in passing, the Jewish tragedy during World War II, and most publications diminish the extent of Jewish resistance to the Nazis or disregard it completely.

The Jewish community is also in conflict with the authorities concerning the marking of mass graves of Jewish Holocaust victims: Jews are not permitted to inscribe on memorials the number of Jews who were murdered at a certain place on the grounds that people of other nationalities may have been killed there, too (Minsk, Gorodeia, Mozyr, Brest).

In addition, Holocaust memorials are desecrated regularly. In September a memorial to 8,000 Jewish inmates of the Slutsk ghetto was vandalized in the village of Gorevakha, near Slutsk. Memorials to victims of other nationalities nearby were not damaged.

On 12 November, at the time that a conference of German neo-Nazis was being held in Berlin to mark the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht, swastikas and the slogan "Death to Yids" were painted on the Yama memorial to Holocaust victims in Minsk as well as on the Israeli embassy. The day chosen by the perpetrators and the fact that similar graffiti was painted in other parts of the city simultaneously indicate that it was a well planned action. Near the Yama memorial, leaflets signed by the previously unknown White Front for Aryan Resistance were left, declaring the beginning of a struggle against supporters of liberal democracy, Judaism and Masons, and calling upon anyone interested in the "final victory of the Aryan spirit" to join the Aryan revolution.

On 29 November, a homemade bomb exploded at the memorial to Holocaust victims in Brest. The chairman of the local Jewish community, Boris Bruk, said this was the sixth time at least that the monument had been targeted since it was unveiled 14 years earlier; the perpetrators, however, were never caught.

 

Responses to antisemitism

An indirect sign of the authorities' negative role in the solution of the Jewish population's problems is their failure and reluctance to protect them from the aggressive chauvinism of individuals and organizations, such as branches of the Russian organizations RNE, Slavianskii Soiuz (SS) and others, most of whose activity is directed against Jews.

Until 2006 no appeal for action against antisemitic manifestations issued by the Union of Jewish Organizations and Communities was dealt with seriously. However, after antisemitic incidents and propaganda became principal expressions of neo-Nazism and an issue of public discussion, many leaders of other religions and nationalities, such as the Orthodox Diocese and the Islamic Union, voiced their support for the Jewish Union's stand, as demonstrated during a round table held in Minsk in December 2006. Both the Orthodox Diocese and the Islamic Union suffered desecrations of their own religious institutions at the hand of neo-Nazis. A swastika was painted on a God's Mother icon of Kuropaty and swastikas and Jewish symbols were drawn on the fence of the House of Charity (see above); a Muslim cemetery in Slonim was vandalized and swastikas were daubed on a mosque in Slonim.

The awarding of a medal in early January by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko to Eduard Skobelev for his 'spiritual contribution' demonstrates the authorities' indirect encouragement of antisemitism. Skobelev is the author of Stalin's Testament (2005), which defames Belarusian Jews. In the 1990s Skobelev proposed solving the 'Jewish question' with guns and said he believed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were genuine.

The Belarusian Antifascist Center was established in 1994 following a declaration by the well-known Belarusian writer Valentin Taras that fascism must be forestalled. Jewish organizations have issued several pronouncements in regard to antisemitism, in an attempt to attract the attention of the Belarusian public. However, Belarusian officials upon whom the solution of the problem of antisemitism depends (in particular, the prosecutor's office and the Committee of State Security, KGB), pretend that it does not exist in the country and classify antisemitic manifestations as hooliganism, carried out by irresponsible teenagers.

In early December the Union of Jewish Communities and Organizations in Belarus tried to establish an inter-religious committee for combating racism and neo-Nazism in the country. However, representatives of the Orthodox Diocese and the Catholic Church refused to sign the joint petition, which went to the authorities with the signatures of Jewish organizations alone; it was supported, nevertheless, by Fedor Povny, from the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus, and Abu-Bekir Shabanovich, mufti of the Religious Muslim Union in Belarus, among others.