Anti-Semitic Fliers in Eastern Ukraine Denounced

Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

U.S. officials Thursday denounced what one called a “grotesque” leaflet ordering Jews in one eastern Ukrainian city to register with a government office, but the Jewish community there dismissed it as a “provocation.”

The fliers were handed out by masked men in front the main synagogue in Donetsk, where pro-Russian protesters have declared a “People’s Republic,” Jewish leaders there said. The document warned the city’s Jews to register and document their property or face deportation, according to a CNN translation of one of the leaflets.

Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” that a respected Jewish leader in Ukraine showed him a photograph of one of the leaflets. He called the document “chilling.”
And in Geneva, where diplomats held emergency talks on the Ukrainian crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the leaflets “grotesque” and “beyond unacceptable.”

But the Jewish community statement said relations between the Jews of Donetsk and their neighbors were amicable, and the self-proclaimed head of the “People’s Republic,” Denis Pushilin, denied any connection to the fliers.

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