Ukraine 2009

 

According to the last census held in 2001, about 103,000 Jews lived in Ukraine (out of a population of 46 million). Local Jewish organizations, however, estimate that their number lies between 200,000 and 400,000.

Election campaigns in Ukraine tend to trigger a rise in antisemitic propaganda. The campaign for the January 2010 presidential elections that began during the second half of 2009 was no exception. The Ukrainian Central Elections Committee allowed independent candidate Sergeii Ratushniak to run despite his reputation for antisemitic statements and violent behavior. He employed antisemitic rhetoric in his interviews during the campaign and a criminal investigation was opened against him for attacking a woman who was distributing leaflets in favor of one of his rivals, Arsenii Yatseniuk, whom he claimed, falsely, was Jewish. In September 2010 the case against him was closed because of "lack of evidence" (see Irena Cantorovich, “Antisemitism in the 2010 Ukrainian Presidential Election Campaign”).

One violent attack against Jewish individuals was recorded in Ukraine in 2009. On March 27, a group of youths entered a synagogue in Simferopol and began harassing a Jewish worshipper by pushing him and shouting antisemitic insults. When a fellow worshipper entered the synagogue, they were able to expel the attackers; however, they were met by more youths who began beating the two Jews, who were slightly injured. The police detained five of the perpetrators. Two were sentenced to five days imprisonment for hooliganism and the others were released. The antisemitic motive behind the attack was not recognized in the verdict.

Many cases of desecration of Jewish facilities, including cemeteries and Holocaust memorials, were recorded in 2009. The most serious, perhaps, was in Lutsk, where on February 2 a time bomb was discovered in a basement window of the building housing the Jewish community center, the offices of Progressive Judaism and the Khesed Osher charity foundation. The timer was set for an hour when many people were reckoned to be in the synagogue in the building. According to the Ukrainian Jewish Committee on the following day, the incident was "a terrorist act directed against all citizens of Ukraine." Later in February, the local Jewish community received a letter from the police refusing to classify the incident as a terrorist act, since they had not located those who prepared the bomb; moreover, after checking it they had reached the conclusion that it could not have been activated since the fuses were not connected, for some reason. The case was therefore classified as "hooliganism," with the culprits unknown.

In Nikolaev, the memorial to Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the 7th Lubavitcher rebbe, was vandalized twice, on February 25 and October 26, first, when it was damaged and xenophobic leaflets were glued to it, and second, when it was splashed with black paint. In October it was discovered that several tombstones at the Jewish cemetery in Ivano-Frankovsk had been broken and painted with swastikas and crosses.

In early April swastikas and antisemitic graffiti, including "Death to Jews” in German and Russian, were painted on a Holocaust memorial in the village of Voskresensk, where about 8000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis in 1941. In December stones were thrown at a Holocaust memorial in Kamenets-Podolsky; the police detained four suspects, aged 15 to 16.

Synagogues were also targeted. Eight leaflets were left near the entrance to the synagogue in Donetsk, on January 24: "You owe us. Shalom, Jewish brother. You are one of those who kills, burns and annihilates the Muslims of Palestine. We can't be indifferent to crimes committed by you and world Jewry… you and your children must be punished as our children and elderly were punished there.” Two days before the Jewish holiday of Passover, on April 6, an antisemitic leaflet was glued to the entrance of a synagogue in Cherkassy and on nearby buildings. The leaflet, entitled "Wierwolf" [Werwolf], called for the extermination of the Jews. The Jewish community filed a complaint and after the holiday they were informed by the police that a suspect had been detained.

In June, seven cans of brown paint were flung at the synagogue in Kremenchug, breaking a window. According to the security guard, four adults took part in the incident. During their investigation the police reported that on the same day brown paint had been thrown at an advertising company in the city which used the derogatory slogan "Hohol" for Ukrainians (referring to a typical Ukrainian Cossack-style haircut featuring a lock of hair sprouting from the top or the front of an otherwise closely shaven head). The company's director Sergeii Kaptan (who is not Jewish) explained there was no intention to insult Ukrainians; however, some considered the attack on the synagogue might have been provoked because the director’s surname sounded Jewish. The synagogue was targeted again during the Jewish New Year, on September 20, when two persons threw red paint at it, smeared antisemitic graffiti on its walls and left leaflets reading "Death to Kikes" around the building. The incident was taped by police surveillance cameras and they opened an investigation.

Swastikas and slogans such as "Juden Raus" and "Death to the Yids" were painted on the buildings of several Jewish charities in Feodosia, Kharkov and Melitopol. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in Kiev was also targeted in September with a stencil of a Nazi eagle and a swastika. On August 6-7, kiosks selling kosher fast-food and Jewish religious books were set alight near a synagogue in Uman. Molotov cocktails were also thrown on the same night at a nearby building housing Breslov Hasidim.

On May Day, May 1, a demonstration of about 300 neo-Nazis took place in the center of Kiev. Some participants called for "cleansing" the authorities of "Masons and Zionists," and ensuring that the president of Ukraine would never be of a non-Ukrainian nationality. The demonstrators came from all over Ukraine as well as from Russia and Belarus. The police did not intervene.

Rafail Yuknovsky, head of the National Memory Institute, dedicated to the memory of victims of totalitarian regimes, hinted on the TV Inter network show “Freedom of Speech” on November 27 that “Jews” were responsible for the famine of the 1930s, during which millions of Ukrainians died. According to Yuknovsky, "Leiba Trotsky/Leiba Bronshtein said during the Famine (Holodomor): We must bring them to their knees; they should eat their children as Jewish women ate their children, and only then will the masses become humble." Authors Elena Mazur and Nikolaii Lativoka blamed the Zionists for the Great Famine in their book 1932-1933: Famine in Europe and America, 1992-2009: Genocide in Ukraine, as well as for Ukraine's problems today. At the launch organized by the extremist ZUBR (For Ukraine, Belarus and Russia) organization which took place in Kiev on November 29, philosophy professor and writer Vyacheslav Kudin (Gudin), claimed that Israeli companies had taken 25,000 Ukrainian children from Ukraine "during the last two years.” Some had been sold to a medical institution in Israel as "spare parts" for organ transplants. Following a complaint by the Jewish community, an investigation was opened against the organization. Kudin's claim was cited on many websites and the Iranian Press TV English-language network published an article, on December 3, titled "Ukrainian Kids, New Victims of Israeli Organ Theft," claiming that "an international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shocking story divulges Tel Aviv's plot to import Ukrainian children” for this purpose.

The decrease in antisemitic propaganda in Ukraine, which began in 2007, continued (see previous reports). According to a report released by the VAAD (Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities) of Ukraine, which monitors most of the print media, 46 antisemitic newspaper articles were published in 2009 compared to 54 in 2008. Part of this decline may be attributed to the fact that in 2009 the National Expert Committee on Morals banned, for the first time, the distribution of several antisemitic books in the country. For example, in mid-July the committee prohibited the book Life, History and Reality by Vladimir Putiatin, who blamed the Jews for trying to take control over the entire world and for their involvement in all the main events in history. The decision was welcomed by Jewish leaders in Ukraine, but they also believed that “Ukraine must do more to counteract xenophobia and antisemitism.” In October, Hitler's Mein Kampf and Blow by Russian Gods by Vladimir Istarkhov were banned. Explaining its decision, the committee stated that Hitler's book propagates fascism, provokes ethnic and religious hatred, and insults the Jews, while Istaerkhov incites against Jews and Christians. In addition, in early August, following a complaint by the Jewish Forum of Ukraine, the police confiscated and destroyed SS uniforms that were on sale at the Kurenevskii market in Kiev. The sellers were fined.

In mid-February a meeting was held between then president Viktor Yushchenko and Ilya Levitas, chairman of the Jewish Council of Ukraine. Yushchenko stressed that good relations between all nationalities was a top priority in the country’s domestic policy. In June Dr. Yurii Reshetnikov, chairman of the Ukrainian State Committee for Nationalities and Religions, declared that the committee would use “all possible means to combat or prevent xenophobia and ethnic hatred" and promised "to protect the rights of ethnic minorities," with the help of educational programs and the media.

In early November the Ukrainian parliament changed the Criminal Code so that murder motivated by racism, ethnic or religious hatred will be punished by 10-15 years of imprisonment; severe injury similarly motivated, by 7-10 years of imprisonment; and moderate injury, 3-5 years. Incitement to murder or racially, ethnically or religiously motivated threats will be punished with 3-5 years imprisonment.

A number of sentences were handed down in 2009. On January 15, a regional court in Odessa gave Igor Volin-Danilov, editor of Nashe Delo, a 1˝ years suspended sentence for publishing an antisemitic article in 2007 (see ASW 2008). Roman Shvedov (41) was convicted in July of hooliganism and given a 4-year suspended sentence and a fine of ~$600 for attacking Benjamin Wolf, the chief rabbi of Sevastopol in 2007 (see ASW 2007).

A round table, initiated by ECRI (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) and dedicated to racism and discrimination, took place in Kiev on May 7. The meeting was attended by representatives of human rights organizations and leaders of nationalities from several countries. They discussed various kinds of xenophobia including antisemitism, and ECRI representative Baldur Kristjansson expressed the organization's concern over the high level of ethnically-motivated crime and the inadequacy of the struggle against it in Ukraine. During this meeting, homophobia was recognized in Ukraine for the first time as a form of discrimination.

On November 30, the trial of former Soviet army soldier Ivan (John) Demjanjuk, began in Munich. He is accused of volunteering to be a guard and taking part in the murder of 27,000 Jews in the Sobibor death camp after being taken prisoner by the Nazis in 1942. Demjanjuk claims he was never in Sobibor and that the SS ID card with his photo that the prosecutors claim to have is a fake. In December, Russia transferred to Germany documents about Demjanjuk, including interviews with eyewitnesses.