Two violent anti-Semitic incidents that occurred in Kiev over the course of a week have alarmed the Ukrainian Jewish community.
On Jan. 11, two men attacked 26-year-old Israeli teacher of Hebrew and Jewish tradition Hillel Wertheimer after he left a synagogue at the end of Shabbat. He did not suffer serious wounds. On Jan. 18, a 33-year-old yeshiva student from Russia, Dov-Ber Glickman, was also attacked after he left a synagogue.
The men hit Glickman with their fists and their legs. According to the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress General Council (EAJC), the men’s combat boots may have been outfitted with blades. Glickman dragged himself to a nearby ritual bath, where he was discovered and taken to a hospital.
In an additional incident, yeshiva students who organized a night patrol Saturday detained a suspicious individual who, according to the students, looked like a skinhead neo-Nazi and was found to possess a detailed plan of the surrounding neighborhood.
Sam Kliger, the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) director of Russian Jewish community affairs, believes the incidents could be a “sinister sign indicating that some are trying to use anti-Semitism in political confrontation in Ukraine.”
Read more: algemeiner
Read: Ukrainian Authorities Investigating Anti-Semitic Attack by Two Policemen
