The Weisenthal Center announced yesterday in Jerusalem that it denounces the vandalism with swastikas of a Holocaust memorial in Bogdaovka, Ukraine, where one of the great atrocities of the Holocaust took place. The massacre by Romanian soldiers, the regular Ukrainian police Kazachievici, civilians and ethnic Germans murdered over 40,000 Jews.
Bogdaovka was the location of an extermination camp in Transnistria, Romania, with mostly Ukrainians from Odessa and the rest from Bessarabia. With the outbreak of typhoid, the German and Romanian administrator decided to kill all the internees.The massacre took place from December 21 through December 31 in 1941. In the first stage, the infirm were forcibly packed into two locked stables, doused with kerosene and set ablaze. In the next stage, other prisoners were led to a ravine and shot in the neck or killed by hand grenades. The rest of the prisoners froze to death while digging pits in the freezing cold with their own hands. The Romanian administrator then ordered that all the bodies be burned.
In the center’s press statement, Director for Eastern European Affairs and Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff also noted that there were threats made against three prominent Jews: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Jewish activist Eduard Dolinsky and former minister Evgeny Chervonenko, now a television presenter.
Zuroff's statement said that antisemitic vandalism was "frequent" in the Ukraine and was due, in part, to the failure of Ukrainian authorities to criminalize antisemitic acts. He stated that as long as the perpetrators of “these disgusting and offensive actions” are not punished, “they will continue and increase.” The center urges expediting the passing of legislation to outlaw “antisemitism and all other forms of racial hatred and xenophobia."