Euroasian Jewish News

Antisemitic incidents rampant in last few weeks across Ukraine

Desecration of Holocaust memorials, Nazi salutes at a football game and threats against Jewish leaders – including newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky – are just some of the antisemitic incidents that have taken place across the Ukraine in the last few weeks.

A Holocaust memorial was vandalized on Tuesday afternoon in Golovanevsk (also known as Holovanivs’k) commemorating the murder of some 900 Jews from the village between late 1941 and early 1942.

“The Jewish population of the village was annihilated in two major murder operations: in late September 1941, when 570 people were shot at three murder sites located next to each other, and in February 1942, when 165 Jews were shot,” according to Yad Vashem.

Antisemitic graffiti including swastikas and a note threatening another Holocaust were found on Sunday on a Holocaust memorial in Bogdanovka near Odessa. The note threatened both Zelensky and Ukrainian Jewish Committee director-general Eduard Dolinsky, saying “the sale of Ukrainian land will quickly lead you to a second Holocaust.”

According to Yad Vashem, tens of thousands of Jews were killed at the site, which was a concentration camp established by the Romanian occupation authorities.

It is estimated that 54,000 Jews from Odessa and Bessarabia were imprisoned there.

Following a Typhus outbreak in December 1941, a decision was made to liquidate the camp. Some 5,000 sick and disabled prisoners were locked into two stables, which were then burnt down.

BY ILANIT CHERNICK

JPost