Ukraine 2008/9

 

Besides a spate of attacks on synagogues, cemeteries and Holocaust memorials, as well as on other Jewish facilities, several Jewish individuals were assaulted. There appeared to have been a major decline in antisemitic articles published in the Ukrainian press in 2008. Several individuals were convicted of antisemitic activity.

 

The Jewish Community

According to the last official census (2001), about 105,000 Jews live in Ukraine; however, Jewish organizations estimate that 250,000-400,000 people are entitled to immigrate to Israel. The Jewish umbrella organizations are the Vaad of Ukraine (Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities), the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, the Association of Jewish Religious Organizations of Ukraine, and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine (Chabad).

Both the Jewish Agency and the Joint are very active in Ukraine, and Jewish charity organizations, supported by the Joint, operate in many cities. Many schools, Sunday schools, kindergartens, yeshivas, Hebrew ulpans and summer camps for children are supported by the Or Avner fund. Other Jewish educational institutions are the International Solomon University in Kiev (with a branch in Kharkov), Beit Khana women’s college in Dnepropetrovsk, the Institute of Jewish Studies in Kiev, the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies and the religious Jewish University in Odessa. Jewish publications include the Jewish Observer of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine (closed in early 2009), Hadashot (Vaad of Ukraine), VEK (All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress), and the literary almanac Yehupets.

 

Antisemitism in Politics

Politicians who make antisemitic (and racist) statements can be found across the political spectrum. Nevertheless, extreme right political organizations such as the Ukrainian Conservative Party (UKP) and the Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA) and others, which promote antisemitism as an integral part of their platform, have been losing electoral power, and although the threshold for entering parliament in Ukraine is low compared to other European countries, they have not been able to gain enough votes to enter it independently.

Speaking out against Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko on July 1, 2008, Oleg Tiagnibok, former member of the Our Ukraine bloc of President Viktor Yushchenko and now leader of the extremist All Ukrainian Union Svoboda (Liberty/Freedom) – see ASW 2007) declared that "Kikes and Moskali [derogatory term for Russians] and their minions have seized power, and without a tough, merciless purge, there is nothing we can do about it."

On September 6, Sergeii Kirichenko, a member of the Kherson city council from the Union of Leftists (established in December 2007, with goals such as empowerment of local communities, providing state support for poor regions, and granting Russian the status of second state language), praised the Nazi occupation of Kherson during World War II on the local radio program “Vik.” The leadership of the local Jewish community sent a letter to the leader of the party, Vasilii Volga, complaining that Kirichenko had already made antisemitic statements in the past on the program, such as accusing the Jews of robbing the Ukrainian people and plotting to enslave them. He also posted on his website a "Catechism of a Jew in the USSR" − a version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In April 2009 Kirichenko was expelled from the party because of "ideological differences."

 

Antisemitic activity

Violent Incidents and Vandalism

According to the Congress of National Communities of Ukraine (CNCU, an NGO established in 2001), 84 people were victims of hate crimes (4 dead) in Ukraine in 2008. Most (including some students) were from Africa, central and south-eastern Asia, the Middle East, Caucasia and Latin America, but a few were Jews.

On January 24, 2008, Rabbi Dov-Ber Baitman, a teacher at the Jewish Shiurey Torah educational center in Dnepropetrovsk, was beaten and abused with antisemitic insults by four youths when he left the Golden Rose synagogue after evening classes. Six weeks later the police announced that they had identified the attackers but not caught them because they gone into hiding. In May, Dmitrii Groisman, a human rights activist of Jewish origin, was beaten near his apartment building in Vinnitsa. Groisman said that the attack was probably connected to his human rights activity. In September, a group of youths taunted the chief rabbi of Vinnitsa, Shaul Horovitz, his 3-year-old son, and a guest from Canada with antisemitic insults, such as "We’ll kill all Yids," "We’ll bury you in the ground," and "Heil Hitler" in the center of the city. When the Jews did not react, the youths started beating them. A driver in a passing car helped them and reported the incident to the police, who arrived and arrested some of the attackers.

There was a spate of attacks on synagogues, cemeteries and Holocaust memorials, as well as on other Jewish facilities, in 2008. Following are some examples. On November 22, eight wooden crosses were erected on the site where a synagogue is to be built in Poltava. The local chief rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Segal labeled the act "a provocation aimed at stirring religious hatred in the city," and preventing the establishment of the synagogue. A group calling itself the "Regional Association of Repressed Persons" took responsibility for the act. On December 1, stones were thrown at the synagogue in Rovno, breaking several windows. The perpetrators escaped before the police arrived. Windows of nearby buildings were broken too.

Swastikas were painted at the 18th century burial site of Rabbi Levi Itzhak, as well as on other gravestones at the Jewish cemetery in Berdichev in 3 March. The perpetrators also painted the symbol “14/88” (14 = 14 words: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children" – a slogan used by neo-Nazi groups; 88 = Heil Hitler) on several graves nearby. After a complaint was filed, the police arrested a 21-year-old suspect, leader of a local skinhead group. In June 2008 he was sentenced to 1½ years imprisonment. During the night of April 15, the memorial to Rabbi Aaron at the Jewish cemetery in Zhitomir was set alight. The perpetrators also painted swastikas, and antisemitic and satanic graffiti such as "Satan is come" and "Dark Angel." A few days later the police announced that two high-school pupils who had been playing soccer near the cemetery had lit a fire there to warm themselves. The fire had gotten out of control and partly burnt the memorial. The police did not mention the graffiti.

A Holocaust memorial and the "Mourning Mother" memorial, located at a mass grave in Poltava, were sprayed with paint, Ukrainian national symbols and racist and antisemitic graffiti, including a Star of David on gallows and the slogan "Death to the Jews.” The memorial is dedicated to more than 3,000 local Jews murdered by the Nazis on November 23, 1941. The other memorial commemorates some 5000 Red Army prisoners of war and partisans murdered in the region during World War II. The Holocaust memorial in Enakievo, Donetsk region, to local Jews murdered in 1942 by the Nazis was vandalized twice in 2008.

In late January 2008, the expressions "Achtung Jude,” "Hitler" and other insults were discovered on the building and fence of the Jewish charity organization Khesed in Krivoy Rog. In July a gang broke into the offices of the Jewish youth program "Stars" at the Shalom Chaverim Center for Religious Jewish Youth in Lvov, smashed several windows and beat two workers of the center with metal rods. The perpetrators also shouted antisemitic insults, such as "Kikes leave Ukraine" and "Ukraine is occupied by Kikes." The attackers were a man and a woman living in the same building. They were caught and fined 119 griven each (about 15 US dollars).

Virulently antisemitic graffiti also appeared on non-Jewish facilities. For example, in late March 2008 posters warning that Jews murder children and use their blood to make matza for Passover appeared in Sumy, north-east Ukraine. They also accused Jews of a series of recent disappearances and murders of children in the region. In August posters calling for a boycott of kosher products were put up outside the Aleksandr Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Kamenetsk-Podolsk. An article distributed inside the cathedral, probably by pro-Russian activists or Russian nationalists, claimed that the “Kikes” had created the "artificial state called Ukraine" in order to weaken Russia; and a Jewish conspiracy, serving the US, was behind the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Orange Revolution in 2004. On 31 October a group entered the Garazh night club in Chernigov during an anti-fascist concert, shouting "Kikes leave our city!" and "Kikes to the oven." They also attacked several people, caused damage to property and painted antisemitic and racist graffiti on the walls.

 

The Mass Media

 Some 53 antisemitic articles were counted in the Ukrainian press during 2008, according to a report of the Vaad of Ukraine. The number, however, is probably much higher due to the proliferation of regional, religious and other newspapers. Nevertheless, there appears to have been a major decrease compared to previous years: 2007 − 542; 2006 – 676; and 2005 – 661. The main reason appears to be a decline in the role of MAUP in antisemitic activity in Ukraine. As the largest private university in Ukraine with more than 50,000 students, MAUP published the majority of printed antisemitic materials in Ukraine in the early and mid-2000s. However, as of September−October 2007 the "MAUP era" in Ukrainian antisemitism appeared to be coming to an end (see ASW 2007) and this tendency continued in 2008 (partly, it is speculated, due to reduced interest in their publications with the ascension of the internet). Circulation of its newspapers decreased and several of them, such as the youth supplement Ukrainskii Leader of Personal Plus, ceased publication altogether. The only MAUP newspaper that continued to print antisemitic propaganda was Za Vilnu Ukrainu. For example, on January 1, 2008 it published a call for Christians and Muslims not to buy food with a "kosher" label.

In early February 2008 the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz published an interview with Mykola Golavatiy, rector of MAUP, who maintained: "There is no such thing as antisemitism... it's an invention of scientists ... Those [Jewish] organizations are antisemitic. Every time there is talk of Jews, they say it's antisemitism... Chabad gave the world nothing good... This is an international organization with branches around the world and you cannot say they are for peace; they do evil things. They are also tied to extremism and terrorist actions ... Nobody will stop me from researching those negative things in the history of the Jews."

Antisemitism was expressed in other Ukrainian media, too. On February 5, 2008, for example, the Ukrainian Antena cable channel broadcast an interview with Kostya Zarudny, head of the Historical Truth organization. He said: "We see how the lie of the Holocaust continues in Ukraine, how once again the fantastic figure of six million is brought out, and that in Ukraine one and a half million kikes were supposedly killed... How long is this kike lie going to brainwash us?" Zarudny has a PhD in history on "the distorted history of Ukraine."

A week later, the same channel aired an interview with political analyst Igor Mazur on Ukrainian nationalists who fought with the Nazis against the Soviets during World War II. Responding to criticism of those justifying Ukrainian activity during this period at a press conference held in Russia the previous day, Mazur said that "the kike-lovers and other freaks gathered in Moscow" in order to criticize Ukrainian politicians who "for the kike's money" betray their nation. According to Mazur, "the Jews’ task is not to allow the foundation of truly independent, strong states in Europe... Otherwise, their power will come to an end."

In July 2008 the Informatsionnii bulletin (Information Bulletin, issued by the Ukrainian Conservative Party), which has a previous record of antisemitism, published an article titled "Why Was Ukraine Chosen for the Killing of People by Starvation.” The article accuses American Zionist organizations of organizing the famine in Ukraine in 1932−33.

On July 12, Redaktor, the newspaper of the Plast National Scout Organization of Ukraine, which won a grant from the president's office and in 2007 was named "the best public organization in Ukraine active in the patriotic education of youth,” published an article complaining that Jews had participated in a Ukrainian music festival, which had become "a place where the enemies of the Ukrainian people committed their satanic rites.”

 

The Gaza War

On December 27, the first day of the operation, several Ukrainian Muslim

organizations issued a joint declaration branding Israel’s actions “barbarian bombardment.” On January 2, during his Friday sermon, Imad Abu al-Rub, imam of the mosque of the An-Nur Kievan Muslim cultural center in Kiev, put the entire blame for the violence on Israel. He also held the “Zionists” responsible for “the daily killing of tens of innocent women, the elderly, and children.”

            On January 9, members of the Arab diaspora, supported by left-wing activists,

such as members of the Communist and Socialist parties, held a demonstration of several hundreds in front of the UN offices in Kiev. Some held photos of dead children and ruined buildings, as well as posters reading “Freedom for Palestine” and “Israel – murderer of children.” A similar demonstration took place the following day in Simferopol.

            On January 24, eight leaflets were found near the entrance to the synagogue in Donetsk, reading “You owe us. Shalom, Jewish brother. You are one of those who kill, burn, and annihilate the Muslims of Palestine. We can’t be indifferent to crimes committed by you and world Jewry. You are to blame. You and your children must be punished as our children and elderly were punished there” (see also General Analysis)

 

Responses to Antisemitism

As in previous years, Ukraine's leaders, including the president, spoke out publicly in 2008 against antisemitism and racism. For example, on February 5, a meeting took place in Kiev between Ukraine President Yuschenko and then head of the Jewish Agency Ze’ev Bielski, during which the former stressed the need to pay more attention to the issue of antisemitism in general, and to MAUP in particular. On April 11, Yushchenko asked Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko and Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko "to work out an effective program to counteract all forms of xenophobia, racial and national intolerance in Ukraine, as well as to institute criminal proceedings against those guilty of the above-mentioned crimes" in light of the increase in cases of "xenophobia, racial and national intolerance.”

In early January 2008 the Ukrainian Security Services announced they had caught the person who distributed antisemitic leaflets in Odessa in December 2007 signed by the Pravoslav Society of Odessa (see ASW 2007). According to the preliminary investigation, he distributed the leaflets on his own initiative. The ADL called on President Yushchenko to publicly condemn antisemitism.

Several persons were convicted of antisemitic activity in 2008. In mid-January the Pecherskii Regional Court in Kiev imposed a four-year suspended sentence on Vasilii Ostrinskii for distributing antisemitic leaflets in the city in 2007. The leaflets called for the extermination of the Jews and for an armed uprising in order to establish a joint Ukrainian-Belarusian-Russian monarchic state.

On April 22, a 48-year-old teacher of Russian language and literature in Kirovograd, Nikolaii Iakimchuk, was convicted for telling his pupils in 2005 that "Jews are bad, insolent people… they should be exterminated, they have no place among people.” He was pardoned immediately by the court because he was an invalid.

The trial of Igor Volin-Danilov, editor of Nashe Delo, opened in Odessa in August. Volin-Danilov had published an antisemitic article titled "Kill the Best Goys" under the pseudonym Iulii Streicher [Julius Steicher, editor of Der Stürmer] on March 18 and April 15, 2007. The piece contained false translations and interpretations of Talmudic texts. The conclusion of the article was that "the Jewish religion... is criminal and immoral, and only complete villains and criminals can follow it.” On January 15, 2009, a regional court in Odessa gave Volin-Danilov a suspended sentence of 1½ years imprisonment.

On October 6, the Ukrainian Security Services announced that in February it had uncovered an extreme right-wing group of 14 members in Kirovograd. The group had prepared antisemitic leaflets, planned to blow up the local synagogue and attack Jews and other minorities. The head of the group is a 38-year-old former police officer.

On August 1, during an online press conference on the obozrevatel.com news site, Josef Zissels, chairman of the Vaad, assessed the level of antisemitism in Ukraine. According to Zissels, it was much lower than often claimed by observers, especially from abroad. He referred to the sharp decline in the number of antisemitic publications and to a certain decrease in attacks on Jews in 2007/8 compared to previous years. Nevertheless, taking into account not only antisemitic incidents, but xenophobic acts in general, the problem continued to be very worrisome. In his opinion, the main reason for the existence of racism in a society was the passiveness of the authorities and the attitude of the media. He recommended that the subject of tolerance should be taught at schools.