“He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:4)
Last week on the eve of Passover, Ukrainian Jews in the city of Donetsk were alarmed by leaflets distributed outside synagogues telling them to register with the government or risk expulsion and the forfeiture of their property.
Jewish men pray in a Ukraine synagogue.
“The last time in history that someone wrote a text like that was in 1939 in the Nazi time,” the Chief Rabbi of Donetsk Pinchas Vishedski said.
The notice explained that the registration was necessary because of Jewish support of the “nationalist junta of [Stepan] Bandera in Kiev” (a politician who fought for Ukraine independence in the 1940s) and their hostility “to the Orthodox Donetsk republic and its citizens.” (HaAretz)
It said that all property must be listed and that refusal to comply would lead to loss of citizenship.
Registration was supposedly to have taken place with the pro-Russian separatists who have taken over municipal buildings.
When, as a test, some Jews attempted to do so, they were told that it was a hoax and that it should be ignored.
The leaflet, which was printed in Russian and contained the Russian national symbol together with the Donetsk People’s Republic insignia, was signed by the chairman of Donetsk’s temporary government, Denis Pushilin.
It is now speculated that the leaflet was designed to create an atmosphere of fear, intimidation, and provocation, with separatists accusing Kiev of trying to discredit the pro-Russian cause.
An infrared security camera records the firebomb attack.
“I think someone is trying to use the Jewish community in Donetsk as an instrument in this conflict. That’s why we’re upset,” Vishedski told the Guardian.
“The first minutes were very terrible for people to read out this text,” he said. “People were very upset for the fact that someone could write this, someone could sit by the computer—someone could print a text like that.” (Telegraph)
Donetsk with its population of 4.2 million is home to about 17,000 Jews.
Even if the pamphlet is a hoax, its very existence is cause for concern. Anti-Semitism is on the rise globally, and the Ukraine is not exempt. Only this weekend the main synagogue in Nikolayev, in southeast of Ukraine, was firebombed.
The attack was caught on surveillance video, as was the rather miraculous extinguishing of the blaze by a passing motorist who happened to have a fire extinguisher in his car.
