Perpetrators shatter above-ground parts of gravesite; Jewish sites also vandalized this week in Moldova, Greece
By CNAAN LIPHSHIZToday, 9:38 am
JTA — The grave of a daughter of the Bratslav movement’s founder, Rabbi Nachman, was razed and desecrated this week with pig heads.
The desecration of Sarah’s grave in Kremenchuk, Ukraine is the fifth such act since 2013 and the most serious, the Jewish.ru website reported.
In 2015, the grave from 1831 in the central Ukraine city was set ablaze and defaced with swastikas.
But the latest incident resulted in the destruction of the above-ground parts of the gravesite, the report said. The perpetrators, who have not been identified, placed several severed heads of pig carcasses atop the tombstone that they had razed.
The area of the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman’s daughter was designated in recent years to become a construction site, but the Oholei Tzadikim association, which preserves Jewish heritage sites, helped prevent the project.Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Editionby email and never miss our top storiesNewsletter email addressGET ITBy signing up, you agree to the terms
Rabbi Nachman’s teachings have inspired hundreds of thousands of followers worldwide. His grave in the Ukrainian city of Uman is among the Hasidic world’s most visited burial sites.
In unrelated incidents this week, a grave at a Jewish cemetery in Greece and a monument for Holocaust victims in Moldova also were vandalized.
In Moldova, a southern neighbor of Ukraine, the names of the Holocaust victims listed on the monument in Cosauti were crossed out.
In Greece, a grave in Ioannina was opened and damaged. There were no hateful messages, Epiruspost reported.
Horrible! The Ukrainian and Lithuanian Nazis were more anti-Semitic than the German ones during the war. It’s one of the most anti-Semitic countries. Ukrainian and Lithuanian Nazis did most of the murder in the Holocaust. The Ukrainian nationalist movement is fashioned after the Cossacks and Chemilnitski is hailed a national hero.
Despite all of that, Ukrainians and Russian Jews off the boat get along famously in South Brooklyn as friends and neighbors. So, there is hope. A true Jewish mensch puts his wife on a pedestal, but Ukrainian men have a tendency to sell theirs, because of something broken in their culture and minds.