Anti-semitism in Ukraine

Here it comes. Anti-semitism raises its ugly head as fascist mobs are on the rampage in Odessa

Buses and armed guards: Odessa Jews ready for mass evacuation

The Jewish community of Odessa is prepared for mass evacuation, should violence re-erupt in the Ukrainian city and threaten to spill over them. Anti-Semitism is a painful issue in Ukraine, with radical nationalism on the rise.

RT,

5 May, 2014

Odessa witnessed several instances of clashes between anti-government and pro-government activists in the past weeks. They culminated in the deaths on Friday of dozens of opponents of the new authorities, most of whom burned to death in a building, besieged by armed radicals, who used Molotov cocktails and firearms in a crackdown on the protester’s camp.

The standoff so far hasn’t touched the Jewish community directly, Odessa Jewish leaders told the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post, but they are concerned that this may change. So they have contingency plans for evacuation, possibly out of the country.

“When there is shooting in the streets, the first plan is to take [the children] out of the center of the city,”said Rabbi Refael Kruskal, the head of the Tikva organization. “If it gets worse, then we’ll take them out of the city. We have plans to take them both out of the city and even to a different country if necessary, plans which we prefer not to talk about which we have in place.”

He said he was considering renting a holiday camp to house 600 Jews away from Odessa for the next weekend, considering that Friday marks the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. The date polarized society: some people cherish the legacy of Ukrainian nationalists, who collaborated with the Nazis against Russia, while others see it as a symbol of victory over Nazism and by extension the modern-day nationalists.

There are fears of more clashes will come on that date in Ukraine.

“The next weekend is going to be very violent,” Kruskal believes.

Evacuation plans have been prepared by other parts of the Jewish community.

“If the situation gets worse, we are planning to move,” Kira Verkhovskaya, head of the Migdal International Center of Jewish Community Programs, told the Post.

Rabbi Avraham Wolf, representing the Chabad hassidic community, said they are taking extra security measures, such as posting armed guards, and are prepared for a possible evacuation. Together with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, they have prepared a fleet of 70 buses, fueled and ready to go.

Rabbi Avraham Wolf and UNA-UNSO commander Valery Zagorodny remove anti-Semitic writings. Photo courtesy of the Chabad Odessa Jewish community.

Odessa once had a considerable Jewish minority, with about a third of the city’s population being Jewish. As Nazi Germany and its allies were advancing into Ukraine, many Jews fled east, but hundreds of thousands still remained by the time Odessa was taken by Romanian and German troops.

In mid-October 1941, the occupation forces started mass executions of everyone they deemed enemies, including between 25,000 and 34,000 Odessa Jews. The site of one of the worst massacres, where thousands were shot or burned alive in old gunpowder warehouses, is now a Holocaust memorial.

The memorial was desecrated in mid-April along with a Jewish cemetery, as unidentified attackers painted them with swastikas, death threats against Jews and radical Right Sector symbols. The nationalist movement denied any links to the desecration, offering its protection to Odessa Jews and sending its representative to remove the writings together with Rabbi Wolf.

Anti-Semitism in Ukraine also made the headlines last month after masked people in Donetsk distributedleaflets demanding that all adult Jews registered and paid money to the authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the political body of anti-government protesters in the eastern-Ukrainian region.

Protest leaders decried the leaflet, which was apparently written to resemble orders given to Ukrainian Jews by the Nazi forces, as a crude provocation staged to coincide with the celebration of Pesach by Jewish communities.

And from the Zionist, Jerusalem Post

Odessa Jewish community mulls emergency evacuation

Odessa’s Jews are prepared to evacuate should the violence in the western Ukrainian city get significantly worse, several community leaders told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday

J Post,

5 May, 2014,

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Odessa’s Jewish community numbers some 30,000, down from nearly 40 percent of the city’s population before the Holocaust.

Running street battles between pro-Russian and nationalist forces claimed dozens of lives in the Black Sea port this weekend, culminating in the burning of dozens of pro-Russian protesters in the city’s trade union building on Friday evening.

The Odessa bloodshed came on the same day that Kiev launched its biggest push yet to reassert its control over separatist areas in the east, hundreds of kilometers away, where armed pro-Russian rebels have proclaimed a “People’s Republic of Donetsk.”

While Jewish community leaders are unanimous in asserting that the violence is unconnected to the Jewish community and that they do not feel specially targeted, they agreed that, should the situation deteriorate, it would be easy for the spillover to affect their constituents.

According to Rabbi Refael Kruskal – the head of the Tikva organization, which runs a network of orphanages and schools and provides social services to the city’s elderly – several of the wounded from Friday’s clashes were Jews, and the community is taking all necessary precautions.

“Over the weekend we closed the [Great Choral] Synagogue,” Kruskal said. “We took all the students out of the center of the city where the violence was, because we were worried it was going to spread. We sent a text message to everybody in the community on WhatsApp that they should stay at home over the weekend.”

While the synagogue, which is located close to the site of Friday’s clashes, was reopened Sunday morning, Kruskal said he planned on closing it again later in the day.

The Jewish community, he added, is hunkering down and trying to ride out the storm.

“When there is shooting in the streets, the first plan is to take [the children] out of the center of the city,” Kruskal said. “If it gets worse, then we’ll take them out of the city. We have plans to take them both out of the city and even to a different country if necessary, plans which we prefer not to talk about which we have in place.”

Fearful of further “provocations” on Friday, which marks the anniversary of Soviet Russia’s victory over Germany in the Second World War, Kruskal said that he was considering renting a holiday camp to house 600 Jews away from the fighting he expects next week.

“The next weekend is going to be very violent,” he said.

While other communal leaders are more sanguine, all have evacuation plans in place.

Communal activities are continuing normally, Kira Verkhovsky, head of the Migdal International Center of Jewish Community Programs, told the Post.

No programming has been stopped as a result of the violence, she said, stating that she intends to continue serving the more than 1,000 families affiliated with her organization.

However, “If the situation will be worse, we are planning to move,” she added.

The Chabad hassidic community also has plans for evacuation ready, local emissary Rabbi Avraham Wolf said.

While the situation has not deteriorated to the point where an evacuation is necessary, he said, “we have a number of plans.”

Chabad institutions remained open over the weekend but with extra security measures, such as armed guards.

“We are in touch with authorities and with security services, and we do a situation check every half hour,” he said.

The Jewish community, together with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, has prepared a fleet of 70 buses, fueled and ready to go, “if, God forbid, we have to evacuate” the community’s children and any adults who want to leave, he said.

During Friday’s clashes, 20 buses were parked outside of Chabad’s school, but went unused.

There are a number of evacuation plans, ranging from relocating within the city to sending community members to Kishinev, two-and-a-half hours away in neighboring Moldova.

“We are doing everything to strengthen the Jewish community in its normal life. We are responsible for [the children of the community] and we will do everything not to leave and not to evacuate and give them the best life possible,” he said. “We really hope [that] it doesn’t get to that and that all will be okay.”

“Obviously, Jews in Odessa need security,” Eduard Dolinsky, executive director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee in Kiev, told the Post.

Blaming Russia for the unrest, he added that violent clashes “may happen also in Kiev” come Victory Day