BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

21/11/2006

EU Ambassadors Lay Wreaths at Vandalized Holocaust Memorial in Belarus

By Belapan news agency, Minsk, in English

BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union

Text of report in English by Belarusian news agency Belapan

Minsk, 20 November: The heads of European Union member countries' embassies in Minsk on Monday [20 November] laid wreaths at the Yama Holocaust memorial that was damaged in a vandal attack a week ago.

Fried Nielsen, Germany's charge d'affaires, said at the ceremony that it was aimed at showing solidarity with the Jewish community in Belarus. "We are shocked at the vandal attack," he said. "We expect that those guilty would receive deserved punishment."

Israeli Ambassador Ze'ev Ben-Arye also expressed hope that vandals would be brought to account.

Leanid Levin, leader of the Union of Belarusian Jewish Public Associations and Communities, said that he had been barred from the STV television network's show that covered, among other issues, the vandal attack. He said that the STV presenter had described Jewish culture as alien to Belarus. "Such description is insulting to Belarusian Jews who have been living on the Belarusian land for centuries. We do not draw a line between Jewish and Belarusian culture because they are entwined with each other as closely as the roots of one tree," he said.

The memorial to prisoners of the Minsk ghetto was damaged few days after the International Day Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism observed on 9 November. Vandals splashed white paint on bronze figures along the steps leading to the stela and white-painted a large Nazi swastika on the upright pillar.

They left leaflets signed by "Belaya [White] Rus Aryan Resistance Front". "The act signals the onset of an uncompromising struggle against enemies - traitors to the Fatherland and liberal democracy advocates, against Judaism and Freemasonry in their various manifestations and against other henchmen of a new world order under the aegis of talmudists and the USA," the leaflet reads.

The building where the Israeli Cultural and Information Centre is located also was damaged in a vandal attack. Vandals daubed swastikas and wrote anti-Semitic graffiti, reading "Beat Sheenies", across the front of the house.

The Tsentralny district police department launched a criminal probe.

Source:

http://www.cjp.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=201004

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