Today in Jewish History - Tishrei 9

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In 1941, the Nazis carried out executions at Babi Yar, as thousands of Jews were buried in a ravine near the Ukrainian city of Kiev. The Nazis had instructed all 175,000 Jews of Kiev to report to the cemetery. Most thought they would be deported. Yet the Nazis killed the Jews in retaliation for a series of bombings against German installations (though a secret Russian agency was actually responsible). With the aid of Ukrainian citizens, 35,000 Jews were ordered to undress, beaten if they resisted, and then shot at the edge of the Babi Yar gorge. Many people were buried alive, suffocated by the mass of bodies atop them. All told, an estimated 100,000 people -- including Soviet POWs -- were shot at the site.

Ukrainians Recall Memories of the Holocaust

From NY Sun:

From the porch of her mud hut, Vera Filonok saw tens of thousands of Jews shot, thrown in a ravine, and set on fire. Many were still alive, and they writhed in the flames "like flies and worms."

The memories of what she saw in 1941 have seared her soul for six decades, but until recently, she had talked about it with no one except neighbors in her remote Ukrainian village. Then a soft-spoken French priest came to town.

Father Patrick Desbois and his small team of investigators have spent six years canvassing the towns and villages of Ukraine to patiently hear elderly people tell of what they saw during those terrible years when they were young. He says his team has pinpointed more than 600 mass execution sites, about 70% of them previously unknown. It has surveyed about a third of Ukraine, he says, and estimates there are at least 2,500 such sites throughout the Texas-sized country.

The work of Father Desbois and his Yahad-In Unum group is adding important new information to the history of the Holocaust — a period exhaustively studied in some countries but still veiled in much of the former Soviet Union. With the Soviet collapse, the declassification of Soviet war archives, and the general opening up of this country of 47 million, it has now become possible to speak to the witnesses.

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65th anniversary of Sebastopol massacre marked in Ukraine

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65th anniversary of Sebastopol massacre marked in Ukraine

18 July 2007

In the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sebastopol, the 65th anniversary of the Nazi massacre of Jews during World War II has been commemorated. Holocaust survivors, local officials and Jews from Crimea marked the anniversary on Sunday in a ceremony near the city’s Holocaust memorial. More than 4,200 citizens of Sebastopol, mainly Jews, were killed in the 1942 massacre by the Nazis. At the ceremony, Jewish leaders noted with concern that the memorial had been vandalized several times over the last two years. Police detained a suspect in one of the incidents, but he was prosecuted for hooliganism, not a hate crime, to the dismay of local Jews.

http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/

Ukrainian MP slams sale of antisemitic publications

Ukrainian Jewish lawmaker Alexander Feldman called on the authorities to stop the sale of antisemitic literature, such as the notorious tsarist-era forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” in the country’s parliament, the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru reported earlier this month. Feldman charged that the publications got into the parliament illegally, due to pressures exerted by “some lawmakers.” He said he would raise the issue at an upcoming parliamentary session and during a forthcoming visit to Ukraine of members of the European Parliament.

Jewish.ru also cited Feldman’s listing antisemitic titles sold in the parliamentary bookstore, including publications by the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP), the country’s leading purveyor of antisemitic literature. The web site pointed out that in recent years, several members of the Ukrainian parliament have made public antisemitic statements, including glorification of anti-Jewish violence during the Holocaust and accusations that Jews were behind the famine of the 1930s that took the lives of millions of Ukrainians.

"This Sukkot we are afraid"

Tensions are running high among members of the Jewish community in Prague on the eve of the Sukkot holiday, this following the publication of the report on a Muslim’s plot to kidnap dozens of Jews in Prague and hold them hostage before murdering them.

Please pray for the Jews of Europe.