Moscow’s main Jewish cemetery was vandalized Saturday. Vandals damaged 15 tombstones and left anti-Semitic graffiti on two graves in the Vostryakovskoe Jewish cemetery in a Moscow suburb, police said. Prosecutors opened a criminal case, treating the incident as a hate crime. In a separate development Sunday, Jews held a ceremony in another Jewish cemetery in the Moscow area for books damaged by a May 10 fire that destroyed a historic wooden synagogue. Arson is suspected. Chabad organized the burial ceremony for the damaged books. The Federation of Jewish Communities, a Chabad-led umbrella organization, said negotiations were under way to have officials in Malachovka, a village near Moscow, allocate a plot of land for a new synagogue.
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