‘Death To The Kikes’ Painted On Wall Of Jewish Charity In Ukraine
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — Unidentified individuals wrote “death to the kikes” on the wall of a Jewish charity in western Ukraine.
The black graffiti was discovered Monday on the exterior wall of Uzhgorod’s Hesed Shpira charity, which is funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, wrote on Facebook Monday.
The incident, which Dolinsky said occurred Sunday night, follows several cases of death threats and vandalism against Jewish institutions in western Ukraine.
In August, a Jewish cemetery in the town of Svaliava near Uzhgorod was vandalized, with some 20 headstones toppled or smashed, according to the local Chabad organization.
In July, unidentified individuals hurled a firebomb at a synagogue in Lviv and, in a separate incident, wrote anti-Semitic slogans on another Jewish community building in that western Ukrainian city.
These incidents and others occurred amid a divisive public debate in Ukraine on the conferring of state honors to nationalists who incited hatred against Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, including for some who collaborated with the Nazis.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Monday mentioned anti-Semitism and the need to fight it during a meeting at his residence with the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin, who was visiting Israel. It was the first issue mentioned in a statement by the president about their meeting.
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