The European Jewish Congress’ president canceled a trip to Ukraine to protest the government’s silence on rising anti-Semitism.
Moshe Kantor was set to visit Ukraine on Wednesday for a government ceremony honoring the late Maj. Anatoly Shapiro, the Ukrainian-Jewish Red Army commander who liberated the Auschwitz death camp, but circumstances led him to change his mind.
Kantor wrote in a letter to the 41 country members of the EJC that, “to my deepest disappointment, in the last few days things have deteriorated extremely in Ukraine with regard to anti-Semitism. After four major physical attacks against rabbis in Ukraine within the last month, we have not seen nor heard any statement from the government condemning this dangerous tendency.”
Rabbis were attacked in Zhitomir, Cherkassy and Sevastopol in late September. The home of the rabbi of Uzhgorod was set ablaze on Oct. 5.
Kantor also noted that a recent neo-Nazi parade in Kiev was unopposed by local authorities and that the government on Sunday honored a Nazi collaborator.
