Otters and Science News: UKRAINE IS KEEPING THE BONES OF A REVERED RABBI HOSTAGE so as to profit from Jewish tourism - Tens of thousands of Hassidic Jews visit his tomb in pilgrimage - VIOLENT ANTISEMITISM IN UKRAINE has prompted the Israeli government to propose the rabbi's reburial in Jerusalem, but Ukraine refuses - Ukrainians are infamous for their history of gruesome massacres of Jews

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Ukraine has no shame...

For 207 years Jewish Hasidim have been embarking on pilgrimages to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s graveside in Uman, Ukraine.
Now in the wake of an increasing number of anti-Semitic incidents in Uman, his followers want to move his bones to a grave in Jerusalem.
Israeli diplomats have inquired with the Ukrainian government regarding moving Reb Nachman’s remains to Jerusalem, but Ukraine refuses to give up what has become a magnet for religious tourism.
Around 50,000 Jewish pilgrims a year visit a site that otherwise would have no tourism interest whatsoever. No Jews, no profit.
Ukrainians perpetrated recurrent genocidal massacres of Jews over the centuries, and many Jews regard their cruelty as much worse than that of the Germans.
Ukrainians sadistically mutilated and killed over 100,000 Jews in the Chmielnicki Massacre in the 17th century. But the mass killings went on before and after that famous massacre.
Ukrainians were enthusiastic collaborators of the Nazis, and helped round up and murder thousands of defenseless Jews during the Holocaust.
There remains a strong current of violent anti-Semitism in modern Ukraine, resulting in a steady migration of the remaining Jewish population into Israel.

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Reb Nachman, the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov — founder of Hassidism, attracted thousands of followers during his lifetime, and his influence continues today through many Hasidic movements such as Breslov.

According to an Israeli Army Radio report, the secret appeal was made by the Israeli government on behalf of Breslov Hasidism in Israel.

The Ukrainian government has already made it clear to Israeli representatives that “the grave-site is a national historical asset.”

Rabbi Aryeh Lippo, one of the Hasidic group involved in the negotiations, told Army Radio: “It does not make sense that half of the Jewish people leave the Land of Israel once a year [to the Ukraine]. The Rebbe promised that whoever came to him he would grant an eternal favor and remove him from all the hellish circumstances in which he is mired.”

Rabbi Lippo promised that once Reb Nachman’s grave is the Land of Israel, “the entire people of Israel will be able to fix themselves.”

Reb Nahman's Tomb in Uman, Ukraine

Source
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/global/europe/ukraine/ukraine-objecting-to-moving-bones-of-nachman-of-breslov-to-israel/2017/11/06/

JEWS IN UKRAINE

Chmielnicki Massacre (1648-1649)

The (Ukrainian) Cossacks wanted to free Ukraine from Polish domination and sought to rule Ukraine.

In 1648, the Cossacks, led by Bohdan Chmielicki, began a series of campaigns by instigating the uprising of the Cossacks against the Jews.

Chmielicki told people that the Poles had sold them as slaves “into the hands of the accursed Jews.” Angered by this notion, the Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews during 1648-1649, in a war that would later be considered among the worst of that time period.

Many Polish Jews fled the country, but most were brutally murdered.

The massacre was devastating — both in numbers and effect.

According to Jewish chronicles, the death toll reached approximately 100,000, and nearly 300 Jewish communities were destroyed.

Cossack cruelty was so great that many Jews preferred to flee to captivity under Crimean Tartars, to be sold as slaves.

The Deluge, as the catastrophe came to be known, brought devastation to both the Jews and the general population during the years of insurrection, invasions and wars. Famine and epidemics swept through parts of the country.

The following excerpts describe eyewitness accounts of the atrocities that took place in the regions of Mogila, Zaslav, and Nemirov, between 1648 until 1651.

In the city of Mogila they slaughtered ... 700 Jews, also with wives and children. Some were cut into pieces, others were ordered to dig graves into which Jewish women and children were thrown and buried alive.

Jews were given rifles and ordered to kill each other...They surround young women and, as they struggled to escape, cut their clothes from their bodies. Then they performed abominations on them until they died screaming....

They arrived... (disguised) as if they had come with the Poles... in order that he open the gates of the fortress... and they succeeded... and they massacred about 6,000 souls in the town... and they drowned several hundreds in the water and by all kinds of cruel torments.

In the synagogue, before the Holy Ark, they slaughtered with butchers' knives... after which they destroyed the synagogue and took out all the Torah books... they tore them up... and they laid them out... for men and animals to trample on... they also made sandals of them... and several other garments".

Some were skinned alive and their flesh was thrown to the dogs; some had their hands and limbs chapped off and their bodies thrown on the highway to be trampled by wagons and crushed by horses; some had wounds inflicted upon them and were then thrown on the street to die a slow death.

They tore open women and then whipped them forcing them to crawl to their deaths.... others were buried alive. The enemy slaughtered infants in their mothers' laps. They were sliced into pieces like fish.... The infants were hung on the breasts of their mothers. Some children were pierced with spears.

Bohdan Chmielicki is still revered as a national hero in Ukraine.

The Holocaust

Prior to the outbreak of the war, the census of 1939 reported 1,532,827 Jews in the Ukraine (4.9% of the total). During World War II, parts of the Ukrainian population collaborated with the Nazis in exterminating the Jews in occupied Ukraine.

The following photos are from brutal treatment of Jews by Ukrainians during World War II.

Most of the pictures are from a gruesome pogrom by Ukrainians against Jews in 1941, where thousands of Jews were massacred.

Ukrainian savagery against Jews - somewhat suppressed by the Soviet regime - was let loose once again, now with the official sanction of the Nazi occupiers.

Assault: Not only were the Jews in Ukraine mowed down by Nazi shooters, many were subject to brutal public beatings on the country's streets (pictured)

Organised attacks: The pogroms were a part of systematic anti-Semitic violence that included beatings and killings which led to the deaths of 4,000 Jews in Lviv (pictured) - 31 miles from of Rava Ruska.

Opening up: Elderly Ukrainians who witnessed the horror of mass killings and public beatings (pictured) are now ending their vow of silence

Helpless: A badly-injured Jewish man struggles to stand up after being beaten at a pogrom in Lviv, Ukraine in 1941

Photos by Daily Mail

After World War II

After World War II, under Nikita Khrushchev’s rule over Ukraine, Ukrainian Jews who fled to Soviet Asia during the occupation slowly returned to reclaim their homes, possessions and jobs.

The Ukrainians who remained in the communities were hostile to the returning Jews.

The government, once again, refused to interfere in the conflicts between the Russians and the Jews. As a result, anti-Semitic sentiments surfaced everywhere — in the nation’s literature and art, and through political propaganda.

This anti Jewish atmosphere prevailed it Ukraine during the postwar period. Only a few synagogues were allowed to remain opened, but even these were under close watch by the secret police.

READ MORE
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ukraine-virtual-jewish-history-tour

DAILY MAIL:

'Blood oozed through the soil at grave sites. You could see the pits move, some of them were still alive': The secrets of Ukraine's shameful 'Holocaust of Bullets' killing centre where 1.6 million Jews were executed

Jews were humiliated and murdered one by one in Ukraine during WW2
Many of them were forced to stand in front of mass graves and shot dead
Women were stripped naked, beaten in the streets during 'organised riots'
Witnesses today have broken their silence to tell of Ukraine's killing centre

Read more
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3205754/Blood-oozed-soil-grave-sites-pits-alive-secrets-Ukraine-s-shameful-Holocaust-Bullets-killing-centre-1-6million-Jews-executed.html

BRITAIN ALLOWED 8,000 NAZIS OF A WAFFEN SS DIVISION ACCUSED OF GRUESOME WAR CRIMES to settle in Britain
- Some are still drawing pensions
- Britain did this after having denied entry to desperate Jews who ended up dying in concentration camps or at the hands of the same genocidal Waffen SS Division that was welcomed into Britain after the war

Recruits of the Waffen SS Galizien Division swear oath to Adolf Hitler - After the war, at the Nuremberg trials, this Division was accused of gruesome war crimes. In spite of that Britain welcomed 8000 of them.

Officers in Adolf Hitler's notorious Waffen SS are living in the UK and drawing government pensions, it has been revealed.

Two Ukrainian members of the Galizien division, which has long been suspected of war crimes, have admitted their commissions in the unit but denied any illegal activity during the Second World War.

The Waffen SS was formed in 1933 as a militant organisation that was initially only open to people of 'Aryan' ancestry until 1940 when the rules were relaxed during the war and people of other ethnicities were allowed to join or were conscripted.

It was condemned as 'criminal' in the post-war Nuremberg Trials due to a number of wide-scale civilian and prisoner massacres committed in France, Italy, Belgium and Russia between 1940 and 1944.

Heinrich Himmler inspects the Galizien Division of the Waffen SS. He was in charge of overseeing this Division. Himmler was the architect of the Holocaust and members of that Division actively participated in the genocide of Jews.

ANOTHER UKRAINIAN BUTCHER,

ANOTHER NATIONAL UKRAINIAN HERO

A new statue of a Ukrainian nationalist who is blamed for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews during the Russian Revolution, was unveiled in Vinnitsa, in an area of the city once known as Yerusalimka (Jerusalem), just some 200 meters (600 feet) from a small, functioning synagogue.

The city, located 260 kilometers (160 miles) southwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, already has a street named for Symon Petliura.

Soldiers of Petliura’s Ukrainian People’s Republic were responsible for 493 out of the recorded 1,236 pogroms and other violent incidents against Jews in 524 Ukrainian towns during the Russian Revolution, from 1918 to 1921, although Petliura’s actual role remains unclear.

Erection of the statue is part of an ongoing move by Ukrainian authorities to replace Russian street names and monuments with Ukrainian ones as a reaction to the ongoing war against Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Ukrainian areas of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Last year, Ukraine observed a minute of silence for Petliura on the 90th anniversary of his assassination in Paris.

Source

https://www.timesofisrael.com/statue-of-nationalist-blamed-for-pogroms-against-jews-unveiled-in-ukraine/