On the evening of Monday, February 24, unidentified arsonists threw a bottle filled with an incendiary compound at the Zaporizhya synagogue. The police are investigating the matter.

According to the information provided to the eajc.org website by the Jewish community of Zaporizhya, four young men whose faces were covered with masks walked up to the synagogue’s fence at 10:27 PM. They took a bottle with an incendiary compound out of a plastic bag, lit the fuse, and threw it at the synagogue’s corner from a distance, over the entire backyard. The bottle broke upon the wall; the incendiary compound spilled and began to burn. The building did not catch fire; its wall suffered trivial damage. Right after the bottle with an incendiary compound, the unknown criminals threw several more bottles containing a sharp, foul odor, then split into pairs and ran different ways.

The bottle neck with some cloth permeated by the incendiary fluid has been taken from the scene of the crime as material evidence. The incident has been recorded in the Unified registry of prejudicial inquiry, and criminal proceedings have been instigated.

Representatives of the People’s Council (Narodnaya Rada) that has begun its work in Zaporizhya are certain that this incident had been a deliberate provocaiton, as a group of rent-a-thugs has become active in the city from February 23. According to the People’s Council, “they had been chased by a self-defense unit from Lenin square, where they had left bottles with incendiary compounds behind.”

The People’s Council and the Maidan protesters of Zaporizhya are certain that the provocation had been aimed against them and was supposed to destabilize the situation in the city.

On the day following the incident, representatives of the Zaporizhya Self-Defense forces visited the synagogue to show their solidarity and support of the Jewish community, and said that they will be introducing the Jewish objects of the city to their patrol.

The Head Rabbi of Zaporizhya Nohum Erentroy stated that the anti-Semitic event was unsuccessful in sowing fear among the Jewish community of Zaporizhya.
“Our synagogue is surrounded by a fence, all of the doors are automatic, we have guards who are present round-the-clock,” Erentroy said. “In this uneasy time we are even more careful and do everything within our power to provide safety.”

According to the rabbi’s helper, “We have all gathered at our synagogue in the evening, and have thus shown that we are nervous, of course, but are in no way afraid.”