EJC: Anti-Semitism Rising in France and Russia

by Hana Levi Julian

(IsraelNN.com)

Senior members of the European Jewish Congress led by EJC president Moshe Kantor warned of rising anti-Semitism Monday during a visit to Israel.

The delegation met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other government officials to discuss the rising number of anti-Semitic incidents and other issues affecting European Jewry, the Iranian threat and European Jewish support for Israel.

"Anti-Semitic attacks are increasing, and European Jewry's strong support of Israel brings its own problems," Kantor warned before the meeting.

Anti-Semites struck most recently in France and Russia, with two attacks carried out in the past two weeks.

French youths in the Paris area assaulted a 23-year-old woman while shouting anti-Semitic slogans, according to the European Jewish Press.

The woman, identified only by her first name Rebecca, was phoning in front of her house in Noisy-le-Grand when the attackers suddenly began beating her.

"I thought I was going to die because nobody came to help me,” the woman said. The assailants were described as youths with hooded capes and of being of African origin. They stole her cell phone after the attack.

Police have arrested one of the attackers.

Last week, anti-Semites in the Ukraine attacked the director of the Russian Federation of Jewish Committees and his wife while they were out for an evening stroll.

Rabbi Nachum Tamarin and his wife Bracha, co-directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of Small Communities of Ukraine were attacked by two young anti-Semites near the Chabad synagogue in Zhitomer.

Two young men punched Tamarin in the face and struck his wife as she lay on the ground. The couple later received treatment in a hospital emergency room for the cuts and bruises inflicted by the attackers.

This was the latest in a recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks in the Ukraine which included an attempted beating by a group of youths who set upon the Chief Rabbi of Zhitomer and co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch in the city, Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm. The rabbi managed to escape his attackers.

A few days earlier, staff members in a local Jewish girls’ dormitory were forced to hold off a group of attackers screaming anti-Semitic insults epithets while trying to break into the building. The attackers tried to punch one of the girls as she fled.

None of the perpetrators have been apprehended.

Torah scrolls confiscated from Ukrainian community

Vladimir Matveyev

KIEV — As their Torah scrolls were packed into black plastic garbage bags and carried out of the Jewish school, the students and adults continued to pray, many with tears in their eyes.

The scrolls originally belonged to the Jewish community of Zhitomir in central Ukraine, but were acquired by the local state archives through communist and Nazi looting.

Since then, in the absence of a restitution law, the archives had lent the scrolls to the community — but on shaky terms.

On February 14, the community was forced to return 10 scrolls it had received more than two years ago.

Representatives of the archives carried them out of the Ohr Avner Jewish Day School, leaving the community without any scrolls.

“This was like the medieval times, this was like a nightmare,” said Oleg Rostovtsev, a spokesman for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, the country’s leading Jewish umbrella group.

The seizure was the result of a controversy that was triggered a few months ago when the officials at the Zhitomir Regional State Archives demanded the return of the scrolls, citing concern over their safety.

In 2004, the archives handed over 17 out of 290 Torah scrolls in its possession to be used by the local Jewish community run by Chabad.

The scrolls had been the property of the many synagogues and private Jewish households in Zhitomir, and were confiscated by communist authorities during anti-religious campaigns or seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Ukraine in World War II.

For two-and-a-half years, the scrolls were kept in a specially designated room at the Ohr Avner school.

Without a restitution law, many Jewish communities in the post-Soviet Ukraine were allowed to temporarily use Torah scrolls confiscated by the Bolsheviks, while most of the scrolls remain the property of state-run museums and archives.

Such loans do not always satisfy the Jewish community.

The Zhitomir community had previously expressed its concern that in the absence of a proper restitution act, they could not repair the borrowed scrolls in accordance with Jewish law.

In addition, representatives of the community had to submit a petition every three months that would allow them to keep the scrolls.

In October, representatives of the archives checked the scrolls kept in the Zhitomir school and demanded their return, claiming that at least seven of the scrolls may have been damaged while in the community’s possession.

Archive Deputy Director Natalia Shimchenko said that the archive’s curators had established that the “number of units” registered with the archives “did not correspond with those in the community safe.”

Local Jewish leaders deny the accusations of improper care or alterations and said the scrolls — some of them fragmented — were improperly catalogued in the archives.

But the community chose not to argue, and last month returned the seven scrolls in question to the archives.

The archives then refused to prolong the loan agreement on the remaining 10 scrolls and confiscated them Wednesday despite protests from the Jewish community and the local governor.

“We are law-abiding citizens of Ukraine and we have not violated any laws,” community leader Vladimir Rozengurten said, adding that allegations of improper care and damage were “slander.”

“The statements that we have damaged the scrolls are outrageous,” Zhitomir Chief Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm said. “This is a groundless accusation, and we still have no results of the examination” of the scrolls.

But community leaders said they had to back off, apprehensive of possible use of force by representatives of the archives.

“I’m sure we are not saying goodbye for a long time to the Torah scrolls,” Rozengurten said.

He and other community leaders are hoping that legislation will be adopted in Ukraine dictating the return of the scrolls that were confiscated by the Bolsheviks and the Nazis.

JTA