Kiev’s oldest synagogue was the target of a firebomb that burst into flames outside the building. The firebombing at the Great Choral Synagogue on Sept. 24, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, did not cause damage, according to the news website evreiskiy.kiev.ua, which belongs to the Jewish Kiev watchdog on anti-Semitism. Police suspect that an arsonist…
An organization representing Russian-speaking Jews cut funding for its Kiev office because of the office head’s criticism of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, or EAJC, in February stopped funding its Kiev office, which is run by Josef Zissels, he told JTA on Thursday. “I don’t know for sure why they stopped the…
On a recent Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Kiev, I noticed a few peculiarities — due certainly to the undeclared state of war between Russia and Ukraine for the past three months. The check-in agent at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport called security to report that an American named Fishman was flying to Kiev, and asked if…
A Ukrainian Jewish lawmaker said he was threatened in central Kiev by uniformed men who hurled anti-Semitic insults at him. Oleksandr Feldman, president of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, told police last week that the unidentified men surrounded his car on June 17 near the Ukrainian parliament, Ukrainian Jewish Committee Director Eduard Dolinsky told JTA. “When…
As Ukraine grapples with political upheaval and threats to its territorial integrity, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is confronting the country’s post-revolution government with another, no less difficult challenge: contending with its past treatment of Jews. The museum has urged the new government in Kiev to set up an international commission to examine its…
Ukrainian Jews with combat skills formed a rapid intervention force to stop anti-Semitic attacks. The force, which was set up in recent weeks, currently is made up of eight men who served in combat units of the Israel Defense Forces or have martial arts skills, the team’s founder, Tzvi Arieli, told JTA Thursday. The defenders…
The following interview is with Natan Khazin, commander of a Jewish squadron of fighters in the Ukrainian revolution that took place in Kiev’s Maidan, or central square. It aired on March 20 on Espreso TV, a popular Ukrainian Internet television station and was the first time that Khazin disclosed his identity in public. Khazin was…
Two unidentified men assaulted a rabbi in Kiev in a suspected anti-Semitic attack. The men assaulted Rabbi Hillel Cohen, who runs the Ukrainian branch of the Hatzalah emergency services organization, on Thursday on the street, his wife, Racheli Cohen, told JTA. “They struck him in the leg, shouting anti-Semitic slurs, calling him a ‘zyhd,’ she…
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