SIMFEROPOL, Crimea -- Since April 14, Jews around the world began celebrating Passover or Pesach, in commemoration of their nation’s escape more than 3,000 years ago from slavery into freedom. Many of Crimea’s approximately 12,000 Jews will be celebrating too, with help this year from a new direction: Russia.
Anatoly
Gendin, chairman of the Association of Jewish Organisations and Communities in
Crimea, is expecting a rabbi and students from Moscow to support Passover
celebrations at the Reform Ner-Tamid synagogue in Simferopol, as well as in
Kerch, Yevpatoria and Feodosia.
“Right now
we have lots of different representatives here from many Jewish organisations
in Russia,” said Gendin. “Some are coming to help the Jews of Crimea survive
these very difficult economic and political realities. Others are here to win over Crimea and Jewish
organisations.”
Recent
events, from the EuroMaidan Revolution to the Russian annexation of Crimea, have split
Ukraine’s Jewish community.
Crimean Jews like Gendin on the pro-Russian side
are isolated from most of their fellows in Ukraine, and even from their three
rabbis who all left congregations in Simferopol and Sevastopol when the first
armed pro-Russian forces appeared in Crimea, and went to mainland Ukraine or to
the United States.
Meanwhile three rabbis from Russia came to visit and sign cooperation
agreements well before the March 16 referendum when Crimeans could vote to join
the Russian Federation.
“As we say:
one Jew, two opinions,” said Gendin. “The opinion of Jews in Ukraine is
divided. Our colleagues from Kyiv don’t understand my position and why I’m
pro-Russian, and I don’t understand them. Or maybe I understand; but they live
in that environment, they’re used to it. It’s a bit different here in Crimea.”
The promise
of higher pensions played a role in persuading Gendin, 69, and many of his
fellow Jews to back the Russian takeover. But the Russian government justified
its annexation of Crimea in March by claiming it had a duty to protect the
rights of the majority Russian speakers and other groups, including Jews, who
were threatened by far-right and anti-Semitic elements in the Kyiv EuroMaidan
movement and the new Ukrainian government.
In
response, leading Ukrainian Jews sent an open letter to Russian President
Vladimir Putin, denying that anti-Semitism was on the rise in Ukraine or that
Russian speakers were being repressed. “The Russian-speaking citizens of
Ukraine are not being humiliated or discriminated against, their civil rights
have not been limited,” the letter said. “Your certainty of the growth of
anti-Semitism in Ukraine also does not correspond to the actual facts.”
Gendin
however, a native Russian speaker from Crimea, thinks the threat from
nationalist groups like Pravy Sektor and the nationalist Svoboda Party, who played a
role in EuroMaidan events, is real. “I started to worry about those events in
Kyiv, and that such people like [Svoboda leader Oleh] Tianhybok would start to
appear here,” he said. “They are terrible nationalists.”
Anti-Semitic
graffiti and swastikas were sprayed on the doors of the Ner-Tamid synagogue in
Simferopol (where Gendin also has an office) on the night of Feb. 27-28 –
the same night that Russian-backed gunmen took over the Crimean parliament building,
starting a process that two weeks later led to Russian annexation. It was the
first such graffiti to appear on Jewish buildings in Crimea since 2011, and on
that particular synagogue in twenty years.
Most of the
Ukrainian Jewish community has described this and other recent, apparently
anti-Semitic incidents as provocations, aimed at destabilizing the country and
providing justification for Russian interference. Gendin has a different view.
“In hard times you have to show who is guilty. Look what this graffiti says:
‘death to the yids’. So it’s saying the Jews are guilty and should be shot
against the wall,” he said. “But next day I got lots of phone calls from people
asking how they could help… So in fact the reaction was the opposite to that
expected by whoever did it.”
The
incident, in which a lone person in a hood climbs over the gate to spray the
graffiti, was clearly captured on CCTV which Gendin turned over to the militia.
No one has been charged.
Gendin
thought it was the work of “some underground extremist organisation that pops
up every now and again.” Since Feb. 27 a few similar, isolated pieces of
graffiti have appeared around Crimea, directed not against Jews but against
Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic group. Most recently in the village of
Malorechinskoye on April 9 swastikas were sprayed on the office windows of the
school’s Crimean Tatar headteacher.
As Gendin
prepares to welcome visitors from Moscow to celebrate his nation’s historic
liberation from slavery, he believes Russia will protect not just Jews but all
of Crimea’s ethnic minorities. Many of them, he claims, have suffered from
repression and ‘Ukrainianization’ ever since Crimea became part of the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954.
“Crimea has
more than 120 nationalities, and on this little peninsula, the main language of
communication has always been Russian,” he said. “For 60 years we’ve been in
moral and spiritual deportation. Now we have been liberated.”
Not far
from the Ner-Tamid synagogue is the ethnographic museum of another Crimean
Jewish group, the Krymchaks. It is situated in the grounds of a former
kindergarten where, according to museum guide Nina Bakshi, Krymchak children in
the 1930s learned Russian, which most then did not speak.
Of Crimea’s
120 nationalities, the Krymchaks have one of the longest histories on the
peninsular, and one of the most tragic. Their culture and language is Turkic,
but they adopted Judaism celebrated with a distinct Krymchak form of ritual.
Always a small and closed community, the Krymchaks, along with thousands of
Jews, were practically wiped out during the Nazi occupation of Crimea in the
Second World War: there are now only about 200 left in Crimea.
Caught
between stronger, related cultural and ethnic groups in Crimea – Jewish,
Russian, Crimean Tatar – which have offered help but threatened assimilation,
the few remaining Krymchaks have worked hard to preserve their history and
identity.
For Bakshi, that means not taking sides over recent events. “Since
our people were destroyed, we don’t mix in politics,” she said. “Now our
country has avoided war. No one has been beaten or killed, no houses have been
destroyed, no children or old people have died. I welcome both sides, for not
allowing that to happen.”
Bakshi’s
grandmother and mother were on the last Soviet destroyer that evacuated
civilians from Sevastopol in 1942, before the city fell to the Nazis. They
returned to Crimea in 1946, and Bakshi was born in the Simferopol house from
which the rest of her relatives had been taken away to be killed five years
earlier. The scarf her mother wore when she was evacuated is one of the
exhibits in the Krymchak museum, as are dresses, belongings and photographs of
the thousands who did not survive.
Now for
Bakshi the most important thing is not language rights or higher pensions, but
that the museum survives the change of regime in Crimea.
“This museum isn’t
Ukrainian or Russian, it’s Krymchak; it was founded by the Krymchak people who
brought their things here,” she said. “We asked the government we had then to
give us this building for the museum. I don’t think the new government will
take it away, will it?”
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from the project www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action.The content in this article may not necessarily reflect the views of the Danish government, NIRAS and BBC Action Media.
