Jewish leaders in Odessa, the port city of eastern Ukraine, have denied press reports of evacuation plans for the city’s Jews in the wake of violences between pro-Russians and Ukrainian nationalists.
“In connection with reports on the planned evacuation of the Jewish community of Odessa: No such plans exist,” said Berl Kapulkin, a spokesperson for the local Chabad community said.
A spokesperson for Beit Grand, Odessa’s largest Jewish community center, said that “the reports about evacuation are baseless rumors. Jews in Odessa are worried about the violence like all other Odessans but have no special plans to leave as a community.”
Last February, a revolution in Kiev ousted Ukraine’s former pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, after he opposed to further ties with the European Union.
Russian-backed troops took over the Crimean Peninsula in March. Russia has since annexed the area, which had been part of Ukraine.
“Odessa’s citizens (including Jews) were shocked by the tragedy” of the weekend clashes, he wrote, “but we do not see any immediate danger to the Jewish community. So no buses with open doors, no running motors ready to go,” the Chabad spokesperson said.
Around 30-40,000 Jews live in the city.
(Source: EJP)
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4 Responses
Neither side in the dispute is especially anti-semitic, and there are Jews active in both camps.
One might note that many articles about the need to “rescue” Jews from the region were accompanied by fund raising appeals.
My 19th Century ancestors lived near Odessa, and they had the good judgment (or made a lucky guess) to leave the region and move to the United States. Their descendants missed out on pogroms and the Holocaust, suffered for 2 generations from prosperity, intermarriage, and assimilation, and in the 4th and 5th American generations, are enjoying a return to Torah. I hope the Jews of Odessa today make the same happy decisions my ancestors made.
akuperma – gimmie a break. EVERYONE in the Ukraine is anti-semetic! According to you there are no true anti-semites except for the tzioynim
Even if this dispute isn’t directly about the Jews right now it could very easily (CH”V) turn into it quite quickly. The news had reports a few weeks ago about flyers being distributed ordering all Jews to register themselves and property with both sides claiming the other did it as propaganda. Maybe it was just propaganda – but what if some anti-Semites don’t take it as mere propaganda but the real thing and get encouraged by it to act out? Shuls have already been getting firebombed, this is no joke.
assurnet: You and Putim agree, and that is why Putin claims he is putting the screws on the Ukrainians. There are some Ukrainian groups that identify with the WWII era Ukrainian nationalists who were clearly collaborators. On the other hand, the Ukrainian government also includes Jews, and the Ukrainians argue the Russians are crypto-Stalinists (though admitedly, only Orthodox Jews disliked Stalin, secular Jews at the time adored him, in part since he kept the Ukrainian nationalists in line). The “registration” has been clearly shown to have been a hoax that the foreign media fell for.
There really isn’t a good reason for Jews outside of the region to prefer the Ukrainians or the Russians. Given that American Jews didn’t flee the country when there were riots in American cities, some of which had anti-semitic overtones, its a bit hypocritical for Americans to call on Russian and Ukrainian Jews to flee the country they are living in (and would have left 20 years ago if they were so inclined).
Given that the EU is increasingly antagonistic to orthodox Jews, but that involvement with the EU results in better ties to Jews elsewhere, there are good arguments to be made for either side. The American Jewish approach should be neutrality, and encouraging a peaceful resolution of the crisis. We really don’t have a horse in this race, but we wish the race would be over and the horses happily grazing in the pasture.