KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — A Nazi massacre of Jews and Krymchaks was marked in the Crimea.
Local officials, Holocaust survivors, representatives of Israeli organizations, and members of the Jewish community, including students of local schools and universities, gathered Thursday in Simferopol in the Crimean peninsula, to pay homage to the more than 14,000 Ukrainian Jews and Krymchaks murdered there by the Nazis in 1941 during the wartime occupation of the peninsula.
Krymchaks are adherents of Rabbinic Judaism who live on the Crimean peninsula, according to Wikipedia.
Both Chabad Rabbi Itzhok-Meir Lipshytz and Reform Rabbi Mikhail Kapustin led the prayer for the dead.
“This event is very important to us because without our memory Jewish people will not have a future,” said Anatoly Gendin, Chairman of the Association of The Jewish Organizations and Communities in Crimea told JTA.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
