Jewish graves and monuments were vandalized and defaced with swastikas in two Soviet cities last week, reports the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.
According to Soviet Jewish activist Alexander Shmukler, the word “Zhid” was scrawled on several tombstones in cemeteries in Moscow and Nalchik, a Russian town near the Georgian border.
Sources in Moscow noted that in the Vagan’Kovskoe cemetery in Moscow, tombstones inscribed with any Jewish-sounding names were covered with anti-Semitic graffiti or destroyed.
UCSJ leaders reiterated their call for President Mikhail Gorbachev to publicly denounce anti-Semitism.
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