Chicago Action for Jews

                     in the former Soviet Union

 

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Text Box: Editor's Note:  Some of the information on this page has been obtained from the Union of Councils for Jews in the former Soviet Union, Washington, D.C. Text Box: RUSSIA ANTISEMITIC ATTACK IN VOLZHSKY Two young men attacked a Jew in a Volzhsky, Russia (Volgograd region) cafe, according to a June 18, 2008 report by the web site Jewish.ru. Oleg Polonksy, age 40, went to the cafe to eat dinner, but when he placed his keys on the table, the two men sitting nearby noticed that he had a Star of David key chain.  they approached him and asked, "are you a Jew?" to which he answered in the affirmative and was savagely beaten.  Mr. Polonsky is currently in the hospital recovering from his injuries.  The head of the local Jewish community has appealed to the city's mayor to oversee the investigation of the crime.  Police so far have not detained any suspects.  NIZHNY NOVGOROD  CEMETERY VANDALISM Police arrested an 18-year-old suspected of vandalizing a Jewish cemetery in Russia's fourth-largest city.  Thirteen gravestones were knocked over or split in two sometime before May 28, 2008 when the damage was found, according to the local State Department of Internal Affairs.  The Krasnaya Etna cemetery in Nizhny Novgorod was attacked several more times including June 8.  Police are investigating four suspects between the ages of 14 and 18.  The arrested 18-year-old confessed to damaging the cemetery.  The other youths said they stood by but did nothing to stop him.  In a rare departure from standard prosecutions of similar cases, the youths face charges of "mockery over the bodies of the dead and their burial  motivated by ethnic hatred." Text Box: Text Box: CHERNIGOV, UKRAINE JEWISH GROUPS OPPOSE HONORING WWII ERA COSSACK Jewish organizations in Chernigov, Ukraine have protested local attempts to memorialize Ivan Galaka, a Cossack leader during Ukraine's brief period of independence who fought against the Red Army and reportedly massacred Jews. According to a January 7, 2010 report by the AEN news agency, local branches of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists and the extremist group Patriots of Ukraine have published articles in the newspaper "Prosvita" praising Galaka as a hero. On the other hand, the local Jewish communtiy published a book by Anatoly Zhaglovsky titled "Galakovshchina: Myths and Realities" that detailed atrocities committed by Galaka's troops. These and other efforts, stifled the nascent movement to honor Galaka in Chernigov. The subject of the Ukrainian independence movement during and after the two world wars is a painful and complex topic, as many Ukrainians engaged in armed resistance to Soviet oppression and Soviet propaganda (along with the current Russian Government) characterized all resistance fighters as war criminals. Some Ukrainian nationalists deny or minimize the extent to which some Ukrainian resistance groups and outright collaborators massacred Jews and Poles. RUSSIA HOLOCAUST THEMED BOOK DISTRIBUTED TO RUSSIAN TEENS The Russian government has chosen a book about a Jewish teenager who survives Auschwitz for distribution as part of a government-funded youth program. "Fatelessness," by the Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian author Imre Kertesz, will be distributed to millions of Russian teenagers in an educational multimedia CD given to Russian 12-year-olds when they receive their passport. The CD is part of a series of new programs initiated for 2010 by Russia's Federal Ministry of Sport, Tourism, and Youth Activities. The CD will include an explanation of citizen rules and responsibilities, university information and resources, music files, and a large library for youth reading to contain the most important literary works of the past century. As part of its goal to promote tolerance and understanding, the ministry chose the Kertesz book about a 15-year-old's experience. It also represents the first time that a literary work focusing on the Jewish Holocaust experience was picked as part of a Russian-government supported literary program for youth. This year, a total of 12 million copies of the CD are expected to be distributed. Kertesz's book first appeared in Russian in 2007 as part of "The Prose of Jewish Life" book series that since its inception in 2005 has seen more than 50 books on Jewish themes published in Russian for wide distribution. Supported by the Avi Chai Foundation and a group of local Russian donors, the series, which included works by Israeli, American, European and Yiddish writer, is the largest Jewish publishing effort in the Russian language.    

 

 

Text Box: RISING NEO-NAZISM Russian sociologists have struggled to explain the phenomenon of rising neo-Nazism and xenophobia in a country that lost millions of its citizens fighting against Nazi Germany during the Second World War.  Last month neo-Nazis daubed swastikas on a memorial in Moscow to members of the Jewish anti-fascist committee and hacked into the Holocaust Centre's website, decorating it with Nazi symbols.  Jewish cemeteries are regularly desecrated.  Text Box: RUSSIAN PROFESSOR ENDORSES             BLOOD LIBEL  A professor at a Russian state university reportedly endorsed blood libel against Jews during a lecture.  Svetlana Shestakovaya, an assistant professor of sociology at Tyumen State University in western Siberia, said during a lecture linked to a state-sponsored educational program that she believed Jews ritually murder Christian children and use their blood to make bread for Passover, according to a report by the Slavic Law Center. The lecture came as part of a training course for a government-sponsored program called the "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" that has been implemented in several of Russia's regions.  According to the law center, Shestakovaya said the Jews perform "a Jewish Eucharist tht uses a small quantity of blood of [Christian] Orthodox people whom they martyred." Leading figures in the Russian Jewish community have spoken out against compulsory Orthodox education in Russia, where the church has taken on a prominent role in Russian national identity.  Shestakovaya also lashed out a Islam for being motivated by an "occult, evil spirit," Protestantism for being a collection of "pseudo-Christian sects" and Catholicism as a "heresy," the center reported.     Text Box: TAJIKISTAN LONE TAJIK SYNAGOGUE RAZED Takikistan's lone synagogue was demolished.  The 19th century Dushanbe shul was razed to make way for a park, the Tajiki Jewish community reported.  The Government has promised to allocate land for a new synagogue, though details on the plan are sketchy.  "It's painful to lose something very dear, something that cannot be valued in money terms," said rabbi, Mikhail Abdurakhmanov, in an interview with Reuters.  "At the moment the existence of Tajikistan's only Jewish community is under threat. We do not have a place to hold our worship.  We also have no place to feed the elderly and the poor."  He said the community has not held any worship since the end of May, and has had to stop its food program for poor and elderly members of the community.  He complained that the city authorities offered no financial compensation or another plot of land to build a new synagogue.  "Even if they gave us another suitable place to build a synagogue we do not have any funds to do it." Rabbi Abdurakhmanov reported that the community has only been involved with the technical details of the eviction from the synagogue.  "The district court bailiffs brought a notification signed on May 26 saying that we should leave the building at the latest by May 29.  But in fact the Chief Engineer of the City Architecture Department came to the site with the bulldozer and workers already on May 28.  They did not even give us enough time to pack up and leave decently." The community, which numbers some 350 people, is descended from Persian-speaking Bukharan Jews who have lived in Central Asia for centuries.  Many Tajiki Jews left for Israel after Tajikistan won independence from Soviet rule.