Rabbi Talks About Anti Semitic Flyer's In Ukraine

Rabbi Pinchas Vishedski discusses anti-Semitic flyers handed out at the Donetsk Synagogue.

On Friday the chairman of the Donetsk People's Republic and the city's chief rabbi both stated that the flyer was a fake meant to discredit the so-called republic or the Jewish community.  The hoax has nonetheless contributed to the tense, divisive atmosphere in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian protests have ended in violence in recent weeks. A vicious information war has raged around the military operation Kiev is staging to try to take back buildings from pro-Russian demonstrators and militia, with Ukrainian media vilifying the protestors as "terrorists" and Russian media regularly calling the Kiev government a "fascist junta".

According to Jewish community members at Donetsk's only synagogue, which was founded 110 years ago, three masked men walked up to worshipers standing on the street after a Passover service on Wednesday and tried to distribute the flyers. They wore no insignia and quickly left when asked to identify themselves.  The flyer asks all Jewish citizens aged 16 and older to register with the "Donetsk Republic commissar for nationality affairs" and pay a $50 fee, "given that the leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine support the Banderite junta in Kiev and are hostile to the Orthodox Donetsk Republic and its citizens."  "Those who refuse to register will be deprived of citizenship and forcibly expelled from the republic and their property will be confiscated," it read.  The order was allegedly issued by "people's governor" Denis Pushilin, who denied the Donetsk People's Republic had anything to do with the flyer at a press conference on Friday. 

Nonetheless, it initially provoked a strong reaction among the local Jewish community, which numbers about 15,000 people, according to Vishedski.  "We were alarmed but now things have calmed down," said worshipper Ari Schwartz.  "For people of the older generation, seeing this paper immediately brought up associations with what happened in Nazi Germany. It worried them," said an assistant rabbi, Ieguda Kelerman.  Although Jews sometimes encounter "everyday antisemitism" in Donetsk, he added, the government has never adopted any discriminatory policies towards them. He said Jews in Donetsk include both supporters and opponents of the new Kiev government.  Vishedski said he reported the incident to law enforcement authorities and asked them for additional protection of the synagogue and Jewish school,