Leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based human rights organization fighting anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, wrote a letter to Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov to denounce anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish-born actress Mila Kunis.
Ukrainian MP Igor Miroshnichenko targeted 29-year-old Kunis on Facebook by saying that she is not a true Ukrainian because she is a "zhydovka," a term which translates roughly to "dirty Jewess" and has been used as a slur against Jews.
Protests have broken out in recent days after the Ukrainian justice ministry ruled that using the term to describe a Jewish person was legal, turning back a petition demanding that the offensive word be banned from the public sphere.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said in his letter to the Ukrainian Prime Minister that it was an "insidious slur invoked by the Nazis".
"Mila Kunis' family, like many thousands of other Ukrainian Jewish families, left the Ukraine in the first place because of anti-Semitism,” he wrote.
"We call on you to publicly condemn this attack."
Kunis, whose family members were victims of the Holocaust in the Ukraine , said: "My whole family was in the Holocaust. My grandparents passed and not many survived," she said.
"After the Holocaust, in Russia you were not allowed to be religious. So my parents raised me to know I was Jewish.
"You know who you are inside. When I was in school you would still see anti-Semitic signs.
"One of my friends who grew up in Russia was in second grade. She came home one day crying. Her mother asked why and she said on the back of her seat there was a swastika.
"This is a country that obviously does not want you."
Kunis'family immigrated to America from Ukraine when she was just 8 years old.

 

Aslo see: Explanation of Vaad of Ukraine regarding the word 'kike' ('jyd') and anti-Semitism in Ukraine