Nine youth stopped for drawing swastikas on Jewish centre
MOSCOW: Nine adolescents were arrested for drawing swastikas on a Jewish cultural centre in Ulyanovsk — in the Volga region — announced Russia’s Jewish community Wednesday.
On Tuesday “youths gathered in front of the centre drew swastikas and shouted anti-Semitic slogans”, said Andrei Glotser, representative of Russia’s grand rabbi Berl Lazar, according to a local news agency.
The nine arrested are aged 14 and 15, he said. An investigation is set to be opened. “Unfortunately, such incidents are not isolated. A few days ago in Nizhny Novgorod, four youths went into a synagogue and threw prayer books out the window,” Zinovy Kogan, another representative from the Jewish community said while talking to a French news agency.
“One of them was called in for questioning,” he said.
The attacks against the synagogues and the desecration of Jewish cemeteries are frequent in Russia and most often carried out by small neo-Nazi groups.