Section: Jewish Telegraphic Agency (USA)
Ukraine probes murder charges against Jewish officer, 94, who served under Soviets
(JTA) — Prosecutors in Ukraine have initiated a murder investigation against a Jewish former Soviet officer, now 94, who is suspected of killing a nationalist in 1952. Boris Steckler is accused of throwing a grenade into a bunker where the victim and several other anti-Soviet underground fighters were hiding. His accusers claim he was working for...
Murder investigation opened against 94-year-old Jewish former Soviet officer
(JTA) — Prosecutors in Ukraine initiated a murder investigation against a Jewish former Soviet officer who is suspected of killing a nationalist in 1952. The General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine opened the probe against 94-year-old Boris Steckler on April 18, the Ist Pravda news website reported last week based on documents it obtained...
Chabad rabbi beaten in Ukraine dies of injuries 6 months after attack
(JTA) — A Chabad rabbi who was severely beaten six months ago at a train station in the western Ukrainian city of Zhitomir has died. Rabbi Mendel Deitsch was 64. He died in Israel where he was airlifted and treated following the attack days after Rosh Hashanah, which he spent in the Ukrainian town of Haditch, the resting place of Rabbi Schneur...
Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, best known for work “Babi Yar, dies at 84
(JTA) — Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, best known for his poem “Babi Yar,” which commemorates one of the worst Nazi atrocities, has died at 84. Yevtushenko died on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had been a faculty member at the University of Tulsa since the mid-1990s. The poem written in 1961 about the massacre at Babi Yar in the...
US embassy in Kiev criticized for praising for Ukrainian nationalist
(JTA) — A Ukrainian Jewish leader criticized the U.S. embassy’s praise for a writer who allegedly worked for an anti-Semitic newspaper. The embassy celebrated the legacy of Olena Teliha Wednesday in a Facebook post that designated her one of the “women who inspire Ukraine” in connection with Women’s History Month in March. Teliha was...
Ukrainian war hero and lawmaker slurs Jews
(JTA) — A Ukrainian lawmaker and war hero used a word usually translated as “kikes” in complaining that Jews wield excessive power in her country. Nadiya Savchenko, a fighter jet pilot who was elected to parliament in 2014 while she was still being held as a prisoner of Russia, made the statements on Saturday during a televised interview for the...
Holocaust memorial vandalized in western Ukraine
(JTA) — Nazi symbols were spray-painted on a monument to Holocaust victims in Ukraine that was erected near their mass graves. The letter X was painted on the Star of David emblazoned on the monument near the western city of Ternopil. A swastika was drawn on the Hebrew-language section of the monument and the SS symbol on the part in English....
Preparing for Passover in Ukraine’s last shtetl
Bronia Feldman visiting the synagogue of Bershad, Ukraine, March 9, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz) BERSHAD, Ukraine (JTA) — At first glance, this drab town 160 miles south of Kiev seems nearly identical to the settlements that dot the poverty-stricken district of Vinnitsa. Shrouded in a seemingly permanent cloud of smoke from wood fires — still the...
Son of Minnesota man, 98, accused of Nazi war crimes, calls for release of evidence
(JTA) – The son of a Minnesota man, 98, accused by a police court of Nazi war crimes, has called for the evidence against his father to be released. Andriy Karkoc, son of the Minnesota man first identified by the Associated Press as Michael Karkoc, called on Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, the two Democratic senators from Minnesota, to intervene in...
Polish court accuses Minnesota man, 98, of Nazi war crimes
(JTA) — A Polish court has issued an arrest warrant for a 98-year-old Minnesota man it accuses of Nazi war crimes. The warrant issued Wednesday by the regional court in Lublin is the first step toward requesting the extradition of Michael Karkoc, The Associated Press reported. Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance–Commission for the...
