Chronicle of Hate-Motivated Vandalism

The “Ohalei Tsaddikim” organization had only finished restoring the walls of the ohel and other renovations a month ago. The cemetery also holds the graves of the sons-in-law and students of Rabbi Nachman. Pilgrims all over the world come to visit the graves.

This is the third act of vandalism aimed at the graves of Rabbi Nachman’s daughters and the Breslov tsaddikim. The tomb had been desecrated in July 2014 and i April 2013, but the vandals had not drawn any neo-Nazi symbols in those two cases.
● On the morning of March 11, unknown perpetrators threw a commercially-made flare, which exploded and damaged the roof of a shoarma kiosk at the Vydubichi metro station in Kyiv.⁶¹. No one had been hurt. The police have not put forward the assumption that this might be a hate crime.

Due to a lack of information, we are not able to confidently say whether this is a hate crime. We have thus not included this incident in our final statistics.

A swastika and the letters NSNK were drawn on the memorial in black spray paint. The first two letters are obviously an abbreviation of “National Socialism,” while the third and fourth can possible mean Nikolayev [Russian version of the Ukrainian city Mykolaiv -transl.], but the letters are unclear and other readings are possible.⁶².

The memorial had been erected by the Jewish community in December 2011, and in June 2013 it had been transferred into the city’s communal ownership. The memorial had already been vandalized multiple times before.
● On the night of April 3, a Jehova’s Witnesses place of worship in Novye Sanzhary (Poltavaskaya oblast) suffered an act of vandalism.
● On April 22, an arson attempt was made on the church in honor of the Mother of God, Joy of All Sorrows icon located in Babiy Yar in Kyiv⁶³.
● On April 26, unknown vandals desecrated the memorial to victims of Fascism near Tolbukhina square in Odesa, where occupants burned approximately 25 thousand people alive in the buildings of former artillery depots. Most of the victims were Jews from Odesa and Bessarabia, but some were also Soviet navy sailors who were prisoners of war.

Unknown vandals inscribed the memorial with swastikas, a Celtic cross, “NSWP” and “Death to Kikes!”

The locals found Nazi inscriptions and a swastika on the memorial. After the locals went to the police, community service providers erased the inscriptions⁶⁴.
● On May 12 it became known that the memorial to Holocaust victims in Novomoskovsk (Dnipropetrivskaya Oblast) had been vandalized yet again. Unknown vandals wrote “PEACE WORK MAY” on the memorial and drew red stars on the edges. This is at least the fourth act of vandalism aimed at the memorial, which was erected three years ago⁶⁵.
● Late night on May 28, an explosion happened at the Roshen factory outlet located in the Obolon district of Kyiv, on 14 Tymoshenko street.

According to the MIA Kyiv Public Relations Department, the explosion created a 60-centimeter diameter hole in the wall. Some damage was done to shelves and goods stored inside.

Experts believe that the explosive device was placed between the store’s external wall and the air conditioner, which was located outside.

The police instigated criminal proceedings, and the crime had been preliminarily qualified according to Article 296, Part 4 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code (“hooliganism”).

On the following day, the radical right group “Kiev Division” published a video,⁶⁶in which an unknown man with a baseball bat, using a Ukrainian flag as a backdrop, stands with his back to the camera and states that the explosives were set by the “fighters” of this organization. Poroshenko, the owner of Roshen Incorporated, was called a “Judaic dictator” in the man’s statement.

The man in the recording stated literally the following (peculiarities of speech have been preserved as closely as possible): “Today, on 29.05, the fighters of our NS/WP Kiev Division group have set a shell-less explosive device at a Roshen store belonging to the Judaic dictator Poroshenko. Ever since he came to power, all of Ukraine’s industry has been going downhill. The population is dying out, and Poroshenko’s business has grown by 18 times. We call for all radical right activists to enact massive strikes on the business of this legitimately-elected occupant, who is destroying our country. We avait new explosions, our comrades-in-arms.”

The speech comes across as rather strange. The man is speaking in Russian, with no noticeable Ukrainian accent. It can be inferred that he is either reproducing a text poorly learned by heart or is reading the statement inattentively off a printed page (the man is standing with his back to the camera, so it is impossible to know for certain whether he is reading or not). The man is notably using particular formal turns of phrase (“shell-less explosive device” might as well have come from a police protocol, and actual “radical right activists” rarely call themselves by that particular moniker) and some of his phrases are ill-coordinated (“since he has come to power at Ukraine”; “s momenta prykhoda k vlasti Ukrainoy”). It would seem that the text is accusing Poroshenko of being elected illegitimately, but the “il” is lost in the actual recording. It is hard to explain the “legitimately elected occupant” turn of phrase otherwise, as well as the accusation of being a dictator that is aimed at Poroshenko standing right next to the statement that he had been “legitimately elected.” It is also notable that the explosion took place at approximately 11PM on May 28. Naturally, the media only published information about the incident on the next day, but it is strange that a representative of the group taking responsibility for the act would have confused the dates.

In the name of the group, NS stands for “national-socialism,” and WP, “white power,” for holding up the racist principle of “white supremacy.” The web page of the KIEV DIVIϟION (the participants of the group use the “ϟ”, the “sig” rune of the Armanen Futhark, instead of the latin “s,” for the group’s title) starts with the infamous “14 words” racist slogan. The statement that this group is taking responsibility for the explosion at the Roshen stor is accompanied by music by the “White Terror” band, the lyrics of which include “we shan’t give up a centimeter of our country to cattle.” The webpage of the group publishes Nazi and Neo-Nazi posters and propaganda materials (particularly glorifying the Russian racist killer Dmitry Borovikov), and reports of joint operations together with such radical right groups as “Nazhdak” (“Emery cloth”) and “Modniy prigovor” (“Fashion sentence”). The last group is a “copypaste” of a Russian neo-Nazi movement created by Maksim Martsinkevich, better known as Tesak. “Kiev Division” and these groups attacked slot parlors and kiosks that sell smoking blends (“spices”).

Earlier, Roshen shops had been attacked by activists of “Revanche,” another radical right group.⁶⁷.
● On the night of June 15, unknown perpetrators desecrated a memorial to Holocaust victims in Nikopol (Ukraine, Dnipropetrovskaya Oblast).

A Nazi swastika had been drawn in red over a white Star of David. According to the website of the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish community, this was reported by the Executive Director of the Nicopol Jewish Community Alexander Taratuta⁶⁸.

The law enforcement authorities have been notified about the incident, and a statement has been filed with the police.
● In early July, a group of Jewish tourists reported that the “Menorah” memorial to Holocaust victims, standing at Babiy Yar (Kyiv), had been vandalized yet again. Swastika graffiti had been drawn on the memorial⁶⁹.

● In the night of June 28, unknown vandals attempted to set fire to an ambulance belonging to the Jewish paramedical and rescue organization Hatzalah Ukraine.⁷⁰.

It is unclear whether the incident was motivated by anti-Semitic hatred, and our investigation is currently ongoing.
● On the night of June 29, unknown persons vandalized a Jehova’s Witnesses place of worship in Kohovka (Kherson oblast)⁷¹.
● On July 1, unknown persons vandalized a Jehova’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall in Borozna (Chernigov oblast)⁷².
● In early July, it became known that the “Menorah” memorial to Holocaust victims, standing at Babiy Yar (Kyiv), has been vandalized yet again. According to the statement of the Jewih Forum of Ukraine, the “Menorah” memorial and a memorial to Ukrainian nationalists who had also been killed at the mass shooting site were drenched in a liquid of unknown origin.⁷³.
● On July 15, an unknown vandal wrote insults and slurs in pain on the front of the Jehova’s Witnesses Knigdom Hall in the Zabolotiv town of Svyatin region (Ivano-Frankivsk oblast).⁷⁴.
● On August 3, it became known that an act of vandalism took place at a Jewish cemetery in Uzhgorod (Zakarpattia region), located on Kotlyarevskogo street in the Shahta microdistrict. The police were able to establish that unknown vandals damaged 19 tombstones in the period from July 28 and August 1.

Proceedings were instigated according to Article 297 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code (“Violation of graves, any other burial place, or a corpse”).⁷⁵.

The anti-Semites places car tires in different parts of the memorial and set fire to them, apparently with the help of a plastic bottle of incendiary mixture.⁷⁷.

A group of approximately 30 people began to take apart the fence around the camp, using the passiveness of the police to their advantage. Surveillance cameras and power lines were also damaged in the attack. The group was led by Vladimir Goncharuk, Sergei Alekseenko, and Oleg Voloshin. Anti-Semitic statements and threats were heard from the group as the act took place⁷⁸.

Thanks to the timely intervention of the Ambassador of Israel to Ukraine and high-ranking officials from the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior, the situation was brought under control and further incidents did not take place. The Rosh Hashana pilgrimage, which in 2015 took place on September 13-14, passed without incident.
● On September 6, yet another act of vandalism was discovered against the “Menorah” memorial in the “Babiy Yar” State Historical and Cultural Preserve. The “Menorah” commemorates Jews killed during the Holocaust. Unknown vandals drew a swastika on a stone at the foot of the memorial⁷⁹.
● On September 13, the night before the Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) celebration, the “Menorah” memorial in Babiy Yar was desecrated yet again. The act of vandalism took place between two and three A.M., and the perpetrators remain unknown. The vandals piled tires on and around the memorial, doused them in an incendiary mixture and set them aflame. The fire was noticed and put out by the caretaker of a nearby church belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Patriarchy⁸⁰.

Notably, a similar desecration (utilizing car tires and incendiary mixture to set fire to a Holocaust memorial) took place three weeks earlier in Melitopol (see bulletin for August for details).

On October 5, criminal proceedings were opened by the Shevchenko District Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kyiv after a fact check had been completed on the arson attempt. The crime was qualified according to Article 296, Part 1 (“hooliganism”) of the Ukrainian Criminal Code.⁸¹.

The sheer scale of vandalism in Babiy Yar, which is an extremely important site and a government-protected cultural preserve, and the obvious absence of adequate action by the government has garnered a wide resonance and drew the ire of Jewish organizations both within and outside of Ukraine.

Various Jewish groups and international organizations adopted statements and calls for the Ukrainian government to punish the vandals and protect the memorial and cultural preserve⁸².
● On the night of September 18, unknown vandals set fire to the ohel (a structure built over the grave of a righteous person, used for prayer) of a tsaddik at the Memorial Jewish Cemetery in Kolomyia (Ivano-Frankivsk Region). The fire was noticed and put out by a police patrol that had been passing by.

A night earlier, criminals cut down and stole the wrought iron gate from the cemetery’s fence⁸³.

The police instigated criminal proceedings according to Article 194 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code (“willful destruction or endamagement of property”). The local Jewish community promised a reward of 10 thousand hrivnyas to anyone who could help find the criminals that desecrated the holy site.

The National Minority Rights Monitoring Group has been able to investigate the background of this incident, which has greatly cleared up the matter.

The 1,4 ha plot of land on which the Memorial Jewish Cemetery is located is part of a town park. The cemetery itself has stood practically demolished since Soviet times. Over twenty years ago, the town council decided that this plot of land is a “memorial cemetery territory” (according to town council decision #86, “On providing local enterprises and organizations with plots of land”). The Kolomyia Orthodox Jewish community was given permission to develop a project to improve the memorial cemetery’s territory.

It took a long time to find funds for the restoration project, but finally the community was able to collect enough donations from private sources in different countries, prepare the project, and start the work. According to the project, the cemetery will be well-lit, the asphalt pathways will be replaced with stone-block paving, and the territory will house many trees. “Walls of memory” will stand alongside the pathways, containing preserved fragments of matzevahs - tombstones. Approximately 1300 matzevahs in varying conditions were found across the city. In the Soviet Union they were used for paving streets and courtyards.

Before starting repairs, the community notified the city council that it is planning to close off access to the cemetery. The community planned to open the territory to the public in two years, once the renovation would have been finished. However, the town council insists that the community did not get the renovation project approved and had no right to close off the park.

On Thursday, September 17, the community closed off passage through the cemetery, notifying the locals with the following signs: “Passage to cemetery closed from 17.09.2015 to 01.10.2017 for renovations and to ensure the safety of visitors.” Many of the city’s residents were indignant. The park is more than just a customary place for rest and relaxation - for those who live on Leontovich street it is also the shortest way home. As far as the monitoring team was able to establish, the community made no attempts to reach out to the locals beforehand. Community hearings, formally mandatory in such cases, were not held either⁸⁴.

Some were puzzled: “That place has not been in use as a cemetery for a hundred years now! The park has nothing to remind that it had once been a burial ground, why did they bring tombstones from all over the city into it?” Still others called for action: “As far as I understand, they cut off their “Holy land” so that no Ukrainian could set foot on it. How about we cut off holy Ukrainian land so that no kike could set foot on it!” ⁸⁵.

In this context, the logic of the unknown vandals, who first used an angle grinder and an autogenous welder to remove the wrought iron gates, which lead into the park from the side of the lake, and then set fire to the ohel the next night, becomes clear.

And the restoration of the pavilion cost 50 thousand hrivnyas.⁸⁶.

The community decided not to block off the park during the renovation project⁸⁷.
● On September 29 it became known that the memorial to the street cleaner Rom in Uzhgorod had been vandalized.⁸⁸. Unknown hooligans first bent, then broke off the handle of the broom the sculpture had been holding, and also poured paint over the memorial.

The memorial had been erected on September 3 near a district where many Romani live⁸⁹. Some of the Romani community have also had mixed reactions to the memorial since the moment it had been opened. The activists sharply protested against the very idea of forcefully associating the Romani with the low-status and menial labor of the street cleaner⁹⁰.

By the next morning, the writing had already been painted over.

The memorial plaque had been installed on the walls of the teachers college (formerly the Gliklikh Jewish gymnasium), where the Jews of the ghetto began their rebellion, in December 2012 at the initiative of the Volyn Progressive Judaism religious community. The community did not file a statement with the police⁹².
● On the night of November 3, unknown vandals set fire to the ohel (a structure built over the grave of a righteous person, used for prayer) at the Memorial Jewish Cemetery in Kolomyia (Ivano-Frankivsk region) for the second time in two months. The ohel stands at the grave of the tsaddik Gillel Boruch Liechtenstein, who had been Kolomiya’s head rabbi in the XIX century, ⁹³

The fire began at approximately 3AM. A bottle with incendiary mixture was apparently used by the arsonists. Fire damage to the pavilion has been severe.

This and previous acts of vandalism were accompanied by anti-Semitic graffiti both on the walls of the ohel itself and on other nearby Jewish objects⁹⁴.
● In early November, memorials to victims of Nazism in Poltava had been vandalized with anti-Semitic slogans.

One of the vandalized memorials was the “Grieving Mother,” located in Pushkarevsky Park. During the occupation, approximately 15 thousand Jews and thousands of other civilians, resistance members, and Soviet prisoners of war were shot in that park. The memorial was erected in 1967. The vandal smeared the face of the memorial with blue paint and drew a caricature gallows pole with a little man signed “Waltzman,” which is the apellative by which anti-Semites who oppose President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko call the Ukrainian Head of State.

The memorial had been attacked by anti-Semites multiple times before. Previous acts of vandalism have taken place in 2001, 2010, 2013, and finally in January 2014.

Moreover, a separate “Jewish” memorial to Holocaust victims was also vandalized in a similar manner (using blue and yellow paint with the same drawing and signature)⁹⁵.

The graffiti had been painted over by workers of the Jewish Chesed Charity Foundation. As far as we know, no statement with the police was filed⁹⁶.

Similar and identical graffiti had been found in the city center, obviously drawn by the same hand. Besides identical drawings, “Death to Kikes!” is also written in several place⁹⁷.

A group of vandals (three younger men under the leadership of an older one) used a crow bar to break approximately 40 tombstones. The tombstones had been collected at the Memorial Cemetery earlier. They were taken from different locations within the city, as they had been used to pave courtyards during the Soviet Union, and had been partially put together into Walls of Memory by the time of the vandals’ actions. Some of the gravestones were approximately 200 years old⁹⁹.