(JTA) — The European Jewish Congress has given $100,000 to the Jewish community of Kiev in order to strengthen security.
The money will allow for around-the clock security at Jewish institutions and sites in the Ukrainian capital, said Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, a Ukraine chief rabbi, according to The Jerusalem Post.
“As an integral part of the European Jewish Congress’ policy to always assist Jewish communities – most particularly those that are not so well resourced – in meeting their security needs, the EJC donated $100,000 to the Jewish community in Ukraine at the height of tension in the country and when, according to official community representatives and our own security experts, the community was most at threat,” an EJC spokesman told JTA in a statement.
A Kiev Jewish leader told the newspaper that the doors of the local Jewish day school have often been painted with swastikas, and that youth often gather around the local synagogue shouting anti-Semitic slogans. He said the money was used in part to install surveillance cameras, a high perimeter fence, shatter-proof windows and to place a professional security guard at the day school, and to install a video surveillance system at the synagogue.
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