A group of aggressive louts have carried out an attack on a synagogue in Uman near the grave of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (or Bratslav), a place of annual pilgrimage for Hassidic Jews.  The synagogue is open all the time and there were worshippers present when the individuals burst in at around 2 a.m. 

The worshippers were not physically assaulted, but were abused by the louts who hurled around pieces of pork, left a pig’s head, apparently with a swastika carved on it, and sprayed 2 bottles of red paint everywhere. 

The police were called, but arrived after the intruders had fled.  A spokesperson for Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko has said that he has instructed the Cherkasy Oblast Prosecutor to take the case under his personal control.  This, it seems, led to the Prosecutor even cancelling a planned holiday. 

It is very much to be hoped that such personal control actually leads to a prosecution, however it is worrying that yet again the criminal investigation has been initiated over alleged ‘hooliganism’.  This was clearly a planned and overtly anti-Semitic attack on a place of worship.

Cases of anti-Semitic or xenophobic vandalism virtually never reach prosecution stage, but this case is dramatically bad, both in its scale and in the fact that the offenders did not even try to do it without being seen. 

Viacheslav Likhachev, the Director of the National Minority Rights Monitoring Group, believes that the local far-right VO Svoboda party are likely to have been behind the attack, though they may have brought in people from outside the area to carry it out. 

He notes that the head of the Uman Svoboda, Oleksandr Zabuzhchuk has been very active on various fronts since the summer, demanding, for example, the removal of various illegal kiosks, etc.   Since he is aware that those taking part in such ‘protests’ were there for money, he suspects that a financial motive could be involved in an escalation in incidents.  There have, for example, been arson attacks on property belonging to Hassidim from abroad. 

Around 30 thousand pilgrims come to Uman for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, in memory of Rebbe Nachman’s words towards the end of his life about the importance of being with him on that special day. 

This new attack coincides with the National Minority Rights Monitoring Group’s report on Anti-Semitism in Ukraine in 2016.  Likhachev, who has been monitoring anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Ukraine for well over a decade reports that although this vandalism has cast a shadow, the situation is in fact improving. 

There has been no return to the worst years of 2005 / 2006.  There was a noticeable decrease beginning in 2007, and “over the last 10 years the number of such incidents has remained at a consistently low level.   If there was a slight increase in attacks from 2012 – 2014, in 2015 and 2016  the numbers have dropped back to the minimum.  Although this is a preliminary report, its authors believe that 2016 is continuing the trend to decreasing acts of anti-Semitic vandalism.

The Monitoring Group’s work has been vital in countering ongoing claims, normally from Russia, about supposed rampant anti-Semitism in Ukraine.   The allegations began during Euromaidan, ignoring the multi-ethnic, multi-faith nature of the Revolution of Dignity and were often used by the Kremlin and Russian propaganda in the following month as supposed justification for Russia''s invasion of Crimea.  There have even been fake reports which fortunately Jewish communities themselves now publicly refute, though unfortunately only after anxious calls from friends abroad alert them to the latest fictitious ''pogrom'' or similar.