BELARUS
2008/9
Belarus
witnessed a number of desecrations of synagogues and Holocaust memorials in 2008. In October, President Alexander Lukashenko attended the annual ceremony commemorating the 65th
anniversary of the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto for the first time.
The
Jewish Community
There were 29,000 Jews in Belarus (out of a population of about 9
million), according to the last census to have been carried out in Belarus, in 1999. Local Jewish organizations claim there are presently 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, Chabad Lubavich, and Reform Judaism
represent the Jewish religion. The Karlin religious community in Pinsk runs a synagogue and boarding schools. The Union of Jewish Organizations and
Communities, headed by Leonid Levin, has branches in many cities and publishes
the monthly Aviv. Other Jewish publications in Belarus are Berega (a monthly published by the Jewish Religious Union), Gesher (Bobruisk Jewish community) and Karlin (Pinsk Jewish community). The annual journal Mishpokha
is issued in Vitebsk. Other Jewish organizations in Belarus are the Union of
Former Ghetto and Concentration Camps Inmates, the Union of World War II
Veterans, the Holocaust Foundation, the Maccabi sports club and Chesed, a
charitable organization that provide services such as food, homecare and
medical treeatment in many cities.
The Museum of History and Culture of Belarusian Jews was opened in
Minsk in 2002. It organizes educational events and engages in teaching and
researching the Holocaust and the history and culture of the Jewish people.
Several Sunday schools are run by the Union of Jewish Organizations and
Communities and the Jewish Agency. There are also two Reform Jewish Sunday
schools (in Bobruisk and Grodno) and one Sunday school for Jewish deaf
children. The Jewish Religious Union supports B’nei Akiva schools in Minsk; Chabad has two elementary schools (in Minsk and Bobruisk).
No Jewish school, newspaper or cultural establishment is
subsidized by the state budget. Nor is any air time on radio or television
allocated to the Jewish minority. There is no Jewish publishing house, and in
academic, referential and educational literature the history of the Jews in Belarus, including the Holocaust, is minimalized (for an outline of the political structure and
government policy in Belarus, see ASW 2007). In July 2008 a new Yiddish−Belarusian dictionary, financed
by private donations, was published for the first time in 76 years.
political
situation
As a
result of the global financial crisis in 2008, Belarus began to drift away from
Russia and look to the West to help its collapsing economy. For example, in
late 2008 Belarus joined the Eastern Partnership program of the European Union,
dedicated to establishing an economic and strategic partnership between the EU
and the European and Caucasian parts of the former Soviet Union without their
becoming members of the EU.
The
opposition in Belarus is very weak and unable to serve as an alternative to the
existing government. Any attempts to garner wide public support have
so far failed.
Antisemitic
Manifestations
While as
in previous years, no assaults on Jews were recorded in Belarus in 2008, there
were at least two attacks on synagogues: on May 28, 2008 the slogan "Yid –
out," and drawings of a swastika and a person throwing a Star of David into
the garbage were painted on a building in Borisov where the local synagogue and
Jewish community center are located; and on December 20, a group broke into the building housing the Bobruisk synagogue, entered one of the storage rooms
on the second floor and set the place on fire. No one was injured. The mayor
ordered security to be reinforced in the vicinity of the synagogue and the
local Jewish Or Avner School. Two Holocaust memorials were desecrated: on
February 10, flowers and wreaths at the Holocaust memorial in Brest were set alight.
This was the third attack on it in two years (see ASW 2007). Some 34,000 Jews were murdered in Brest during the Holocaust. On April 20 (Hitler's birthday) the Holocaust memorial in
Slutsk was defaced with dozens of swastikas and the number 88 (representing “Hail
Hitler”). City services helped to clean the memorial which marks the place
where in 1941 the Nazis shot and burned to death 3,000 Jews. In none of those
incidents were the perpetrators caught. It should be noted that no information
is available about neo-Nazi groups in Belarus.
Antisemitic
graffiti appeared also on non-Jewish facilities. In February swastikas were
painted at several places in Homel, including the Palace of Culture, a
newspaper kiosk and the local market; on June 4, "Stop Jew" and a
crossed out Star of David were reported on a wall in the center of Minsk; and
in October graffiti reading "Nazi," together with Nazi symbolic
numbers, appeared in an underground passage in Vitebsk. Two months later the
graffiti was still there.
The
only notable reaction to Operation Cast Lead in Belarus was that of Mufti
Ismail Voronovich, head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of Belarus, who in
early January 2009 submitted a letter to Israel’s ambassador to Belarus, Zeev
Ben-Arie, labeling Israel’s actions “a genocide of the Palestinian people” and
“crimes against humanity,” and demanding an immediate end to “the murder of the
peaceful population.”
Attitudes
Toward the Holocaust and the Nazi Era
Both
negative and positive tendencies in attitudes toward the Holocaust were
observed during 2008. In March, during a session in Minsk of the Coordination
Council of the Republic of Belarus which discussed approving a memorial to Holocaust
victims in Vitebsk, one of the participants, a Belarusian sculptor said:
"Until when will the Jews exaggerate their tragedy? There was no
Holocaust. This must be stopped." The
memorial was approved.
In
April Leonid Levin, head of the Union of Belarusian Jewish Associations and
Communities, announced that local Jewish organizations had asked the Belarus
government to establish a national Holocaust memorial day, such as October 21,
22 or 23 − the period of the destruction of the Minsk ghetto. However,
the response was that there was no need since there were several international
Holocaust days, although even January 27, the UN-sanctioned Memorial Day, has
not been officially adopted in Belarus.
On
the positive side several events connected to commemoration are worth
mentioning. On May 22, a memorial park was inaugurated in Dokshitsi, Vitebsk region, on the site of the former Jewish cemetery. About 2,800 local Jews,
including children, were murdered by the Nazis on this and the following days
in 1942. The original memorial site was destroyed by the Soviets in 1965. The
initiative to restore it came from the town authorities.
In
June 2008, for the fourth time in recent years, the Jewish community of Mogilev asked the city authorities for permission to establish a Holocaust memorial
(financed by private donations) on the site of the local ghetto, where more
than 10,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis. In August permission was finally
granted.
Three
events were connected to the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto. On October 20, an annual ceremony was held at the Yama memorial complex in Minsk. The ceremony was attended for the first time by President Alexander Lukashenko, who
said that "[only] a small part of Belarusian Jews survived… They were
killed merely because they were Jews." He also declared that a memorial would
be established at the site of the Maly Trastsianets death camp, where thousands
of Jews and others were murdered by the Nazis. "The new generations have
not forgotten what happened in the middle of the last century... We are full of
determination to counteract any manifestations of Nazism and religious
intolerance," the president declared.
On
October 21, the Belarus Ministry of Communication issued a stamp entitled "In
Memory of Holocaust Victims." The stamp shows a red fire against a dark
gray background, light gray barbed wire, the emblem of the UN and the title in
Hebrew and Belarussian.
The
ministry also issued a First Day Cover marking the 65th anniversary of the
liquidation of the Minsk ghetto
.
On
October 24, Minister of Defense Leonid Maltsev awarded medals for courage and
heroism to 21 heads of groups in the Jewish anti-fascist resistance in the
Minsk ghetto during World War II (the list of underground members contains a
total of 317 names). The medals were transferred to the Museum of the History
and Culture of Belarus Jews in Minsk. After locating their descendants, the museum
held a ceremony on November 25 during which the medals were presented.
Responses
to racism and antisemitism
As
noted, and as in previous years, no perpetrators of antisemitic incidents were
caught and/or tried. On June 22, during a meeting in Brest between Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, both
leaders condemned "any attempt at rewriting history and revision of the
results of World War Two." They said that "in other countries, Britain for example, Nazi criminals are arrested, not justified." The condemnation
came in response to the attempts of Ukraine and the Baltic States to claim that
they had suffered equally under the Soviets and the Nazis and to rehabilitate
local nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis during the war.
In
December a regional court in Minsk ruled that 13 books published by the Khristianskaia
Initsiatsiva publishing house (see ASW 2005, 2006 and 2007)
were extremist and antisemitic. Among other things, the books call for an armed
struggle against Jews and insult the Catholic Church. The publishing house appealed
the erdict in January 2009;however, the Minsk City Court ratified it in early
March
In
May 2008 about 2000 members of the Belarusian Protestant community held a
special prayer for the "Jewish people and peace in Israel," to mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. Father Oleg
Akulenko explained that "the Bible says that every Christian has to pray
for Israel and the Jewish people" and that "the 60th anniversary of
Israel is a time to confess persecutions, oppressions and lack of respect for
the Jewish people that took place in the past."
