Buses and armed guards: Odessa Jews ready for mass evacuation

Published time: May 05, 2014 09:19

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Odessa Jews holding a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Image from chabad.odessa.ua

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The Jewish community of Odessa is prepared for mass evacuation, should violence re-erupt in the Ukrainian city and threaten to spill over them. Anti-Semitism is a painful issue in Ukraine, with radical nationalism on the rise.

Odessa witnessed several instances of clashes between anti-government and pro-government activists in the past weeks. They culminated in the deaths on Friday of dozens of opponents of the new authorities, most of whom burned to death in a building, besieged by armed radicals, who used Molotov cocktails and firearms in a crackdown on the protester’s camp.

The standoff so far hasn’t touched the Jewish community directly, Odessa Jewish leaders told the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post, but they are concerned that this may change. So they have contingency plans for evacuation, possibly out of the country.

“When there is shooting in the streets, the first plan is to take [the children] out of the center of the city,”said Rabbi Refael Kruskal, the head of the Tikva organization. “If it gets worse, then we’ll take them out of the city. We have plans to take them both out of the city and even to a different country if necessary, plans which we prefer not to talk about which we have in place.”

He said he was considering renting a holiday camp to house 600 Jews away from Odessa for the next weekend, considering that Friday marks the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. The date polarized society: some people cherish the legacy of Ukrainian nationalists, who collaborated with the Nazis against Russia, while others see it as a symbol of victory over Nazism and by extension the modern-day nationalists.

There are fears of more clashes will come on that date in Ukraine.

“The next weekend is going to be very violent,” Kruskal believes.

Evacuation plans have been prepared by other parts of the Jewish community.

“If the situation gets worse, we are planning to move,” Kira Verkhovskaya, head of the Migdal International Center of Jewish Community Programs, told the Post.

Rabbi Avraham Wolf, representing the Chabad hassidic community, said they are taking extra security measures, such as posting armed guards, and are prepared for a possible evacuation. Together with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, they have prepared a fleet of 70 buses, fueled and ready to go.

Rabbi Avraham Wolf and UNA-UNSO commander Valery Zagorodny remove anti-Semitic writings. Photo courtesy of the Chabad Odessa Jewish community.

Odessa once had a considerable Jewish minority, with about a third of the city’s population being Jewish. As Nazi Germany and its allies were advancing into Ukraine, many Jews fled east, but hundreds of thousands still remained by the time Odessa was taken by Romanian and German troops.

In mid-October 1941, the occupation forces started mass executions of everyone they deemed enemies, including between 25,000 and 34,000 Odessa Jews. The site of one of the worst massacres, where thousands were shot or burned alive in old gunpowder warehouses, is now a Holocaust memorial.

The memorial was desecrated in mid-April along with a Jewish cemetery, as unidentified attackers painted them with swastikas, death threats against Jews and radical Right Sector symbols. The nationalist movement denied any links to the desecration, offering its protection to Odessa Jews and sending its representative to remove the writings together with Rabbi Wolf.

Anti-Semitism in Ukraine also made the headlines last month after masked people in Donetsk distributed leaflets demanding that all adult Jews registered and paid money to the authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the political body of anti-government protesters in the eastern-Ukrainian region.

Protest leaders decried the leaflet, which was apparently written to resemble orders given to Ukrainian Jews by the Nazi forces, as a crude provocation staged to coincide with the celebration of Pesach by Jewish communities.

Russian Foreign Ministry presents White Book on human rights abuses in Ukraine

Russia

May 05, 13:34 UTC+4
The main task of the White Book is to familiarize the public with real facts and reports on developments in Ukraine

House of trade unions in Odessa on fire, May 2, 2014

© ITAR-TASS/Andrei Borovskiy

Russian Foreign Ministry: Council of Europe ‘must urge Kiev to comply with Geneva accord’

MOSCOW, May 05. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s ‘White Book’ on large-scale human rights violations in Ukraine has been presented to President Vladimir Putin.

The White Book prepared by the ministry integrates numerous facts of human rights abuses in Ukraine between the end of November 2013 and the end of March 2014, the ministry’s press service says. “It is based on information by Russian, Ukrainian and western media outlets, statements by representatives of the present Kiev authorities and their supporters, eyewitness accounts as well as on-the-spot observations and interviews gathered by Russian non-commercial organizations,” the Kremlin’s official website reported.

“Factual information appearing in the report makes it possible to affirm that grossest violations of the basic principles and norms in the sphere of human rights have become large-scale in Ukraine,” it said.

The main task of the White Book is to familiarize the public with real facts and reports on developments in Ukraine and thus to help shape non-politicized unbiased assessment, reveal and bring to account those responsible for unlawful activity, the Foreign Ministry’s press service said.

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN UKRAINE

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Human rights violations in Ukraine

April 28, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a statement saying that Moscow was deeply concerned by egregious cases of arrests of Ukrainian South-East’s public figures and other facts of human rights violations committed by the Kiev regime.

“The state of Pavel Gubarev, elected as the popular governor of Donetsk raises serious concern,” the statement said. “In early March, he was kidnapped by Kiev’s security forces and for unsubstantiated reasons accused of staging mass riots and attempting to divide Ukraine. Gubarev suffered tortures, and now he is on an ongoing hunger strike.”

The Foreign Ministry drew attention to the fact that Gubarev is far from the only political prisoner of the Kiev regime. “Media reports allow suggesting that the ‘witch hunt’ has begun, as mass prosecution of dissidents, political persecution and repressions against everyone who dares to express disagreement with the power of Maidan,” the ministry stated.

Manipulationstricks zu Odessa-Massaker:  http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2014/05/05/ukraine-2014-das-odessa-massaker-und-die-manipulationstricks-deutscher-medien-rechter-sektor-mit-kampfformationen-wie-auf-dem-maidan-war-in-odessa-federfuhrend-mainstream-verschweigt-dies-syst/

Das Odessa-Massaker, die Opfer. Mit wem die Regierungen in Berlin und Washington gemeinsame Sache machen. Weiter warten auf Distanzierung durch Merkel, Steinmeier, Gauck etc. von SS-Methoden der Anhänger des Kiewer Putschregimes. **

tags: scholl-latour und desinformation, ukraine-kalter krieg 2014

Ausriß.

 http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2014/05/05/ukraine-2014-der-bemerkenswerte-wahrheitsgehalt-von-statements-der-kiewer-putschregierung-rusland-fuhrt-einen-krieg-gegen-die-ukraine-in-den-ostlichen-und-sudlichen-landesregionen-praside/

Ausriß.

Manipulationstricks zu Odessa-Massaker:  http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2014/05/05/ukraine-2014-das-odessa-massaker-und-die-manipulationstricks-deutscher-medien-rechter-sektor-mit-kampfformationen-wie-auf-dem-maidan-war-in-odessa-federfuhrend-mainstream-verschweigt-dies-syst/

CIA offenbar auch in Odessa dabei: http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2014/05/05/ukraine-2014-cia-einmischung-bei-konflikt-sowie-cia-stutzung-der-faschistischen-putschregierung-kiews-erstmals-offen-eingeraumt-unterstutzung-bekommt-die-ukrainische-ubergangsregierung-einem-zeit/

 Wen die Regierung in Berlin unterstützt:

Ausriß,  Svoboda-Führer Tjagnibok – Mitglied der Kiewer Putschregierung, vom Westen gemäß den Wertvorstellungen der Spitzenpolitiker entsprechend hofiert.

Simon-Wiesenthal-Zentrum prangert antisemitische Svoboda-Partei der Ukraine an.

Ungehinderte SS-Verherrlichung 2014 in der Ukraine – keinerlei Proteste etwa aus Berlin:  http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2014/04/28/ukraine-2014-der-neonazi-aufmarsch-der-ss-verherrlicher-video-anklicken-kurios-deutsche-medien-deutsche-tv-teams-erneut-nicht-vor-ort-wie-bei-vielen-derartigen-aufmarschen-zuvor/

Wertvorstellungen – Angela Merkel und Freundin Timoschenko(”Russen abschlachten”):  http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2014/03/27/weiter-warten-auf-merkel-positionierung-zu-ihrer-freundin-timoschenko-bisher-nur-2-satze-armselig-oberflachliche-alibi-kritik-von-regierungssprecher-%E2%80%9Egewaltbilder-gewaltphantasien-liegen-we/

Wertvorstellungen – Angela Merkel – Zeitdokument, der Irakkrieg:   http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2014/04/16/ukraine-2014-und-nato-mobilmachung-an-ruslands-grenze-zeitdokument-merkel-verteidigt-irak-kriegfaz-rd15-millionen-kriegstote/