Destruction of Chabad Houses: Russian Attacks Damage Synagogues in Ukraine

2024-01-22 11:29:10

The destruction of Chabad houses

A missile launched over the weekend towards Kherson in southern Ukraine caused damage to the synagogue building in the city. The chief rabbi of Harson and the rabbi’s messenger, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolf said that many shrapnel hit the courtyard and the building of the synagogue and caused minor damage.

“The whole courtyard of the synagogue is filled with these shrapnel,” said the messenger, “and the shrapnel is also stuck in the walls of the synagogue, endlessly. After the missile exploded in the air, there are 8,000 such shrapnel scattered from the missile and the synagogue was hit by hundreds of these.”

Kherson is one of the most bombed cities in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. It was even occupied during the first period of the war, but the Russians abandoned it a few months later and have not stopped shelling it since then.

In the shadow of the many attacks in the last month, the Jewish community in Salvita in the west of the country also reported to the “Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine” that the local synagogue was hit by a large fragment of a Russian rocket that destroyed the building’s ceiling. Dozens of Jews currently live in Salvita and it has a rich Jewish historical past and the famous printing house of the Shapira brothers operated there, among other things.

As you may remember, during the war quite a few synagogues in Ukraine were damaged by Russian attacks, including the synagogue in Kharkov, the historical synagogue in Bakhmut and also the synagogue in Mariupol which was completely destroyed. Jewish cemeteries and memorials, such as in Kiev and in the town of Hokhaiv near Sumy in the north of the country, have been damaged in the past by Russian missiles and shells.

The “Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine” (FJCU), the umbrella organization that unites the approximately 180 communities in the country, said: “The vicious Russian attacks continue unabated and the world has almost forgotten the unimaginable reality we face. The social workers and the psychological system are in contact with the heads of the communities in Ukraine To provide a maximum response to every request.”