On the night of 9-10 May the building of a synagogue in the suburbs of Moscow burned down. The local rabbi is convinced that he is dealing here with intentional arson "on the basis of religious intolerance."

Russia—On the night of 9-10 May the building of a synagogue in the suburbs of Moscow burned down. The local rabbi is convinced that he is dealing here with intentional arson “on the basis of religious intolerance.” But experts advise that one not make hasty conclusions but await the results of the investigation. Nevertheless one should not forget that Russia occupies one of the top places in the world in number of antisemitic acts.

On 9 May Vladimir Putin had barely declared that “antisemitism represents a special evil because Russia is a multinational and multiconfessional country,” when that very night in the rural settlement of Malakhovka the synagogue burned down. The fire started, according to witnesses, close to morning. The fire department was called and they quickly got the fire under control. But the old wooden building burned to the ground and it cannot be restored. When the local Rabbi Moshe Tamarin arrived at the fire scene he stated that three days before the fire unknown persons tried to rob the synagogue. It was this fact that forced the rabbi to suggest that this is a case of intentional arson. At that time audio and video equipment was stolen. Following a warm trail the police managed to find the thief, a local resident and unemployed drug addict. Some of the stolen goods were found in his apartment.

The synagogue in Malakhovka has an extremely stormy history and this it not the first time it has caught fire. The log building in the old suburban settlement was built back in 1932 by the local Jewish community. In those years the building of any houses of worship or religious buildings, to say nothing of a synagogue, was, to put it mildly, not encouraged by soviet authorities. Thus the facade of the synagogue was made to look like an ordinary outbuilding and services were conducted secretly. But by 1936 it was nationalized and the tenant of the parcel of land was convicted of counterrevolutionary activity and shot. But services continued even in the requisitioned building. In 1959 the synagogue caught fire the first time. But at the time neighbors noticed the flame and extinguished it by their own efforts. It is interesting that it was just on the first of March of this year that the synagogue building in Malakhovka was turned over by local authorities to the local Jewish community for use free of charge.

Rabbi Moshe Tamarin’s version about arson was supported also by the Federation of Jewish Organizations of Russia. This was reported yesterday by the press secretary of the organization, Borukh Gorin. “Of the Jewish objects of Moscow and the province, this was one of the least protected spots. The synagogue is located in a rural settlement and, since summer vacationers had not yet arrived at their dachas it was much easier to commit arson in such a place than in another spot in Moscow and the province,” he said yesterday. Then the chief rabbi of Russia, Berl Lazar, went to the fire site.

Meanwhile, not everybody has unequivocally supported the arson account. Thus, the former president of the Russian Jewish Congress and current president of the Institute for the Study of Israel and the Near East, Evgeny Satanovsky, advises not to draw hasty conclusions but wait for results of the investigation. “Old wooden buildings burn for a variety of reasons; it could be the fire was set or wiring might not be in proper condition,” he declared yesterday on air at radio station “Echo of Moscow.”

We recall that in April of this year, before the visit of Vladimir Putin to Israel, the minister of affairs of Jerusalem and the diaspora of the government of Israel, Natan Sharansky, stated that in sum in 2004 Russia was among a trio of countries where the number of antisemitic outbreaks increased. Besides Russia, this group included Great Britain and Ukraine.

The director of the Moscow Bureau on Human Rights, Alexander Brod, does not rule out the idea of arson in the case of the synagogue in Malakhovka. Although he said that it is possible the fire was connected with the wiring; the building was dilapidated. “Desecration of synagogues is a common phenomenon for Russia,” the rights defender stated. “This has happened sufficiently regularly in quite diverse regions. In Moscow there have been attempts to halt construction; in St. Petersburg, Kostroma, and Nizhny Novgorod synagogues are continuously being desecrated and swastikas have been drawn on the synagogue in Krasnoiarsk and synagogues in Tiumen have been desecrated. We have information that on 9 May in Moscow, some people drove around the Jewish Cultural Center on motorcycles and shouted antisemitic slogans. But I think that it is necessary to make conclusions after an objective conclusion by law enforcement agencies.”

Chronicle of antisemitism:

• January 2004: Unknown persons exploded a grenade in the yard of the synagogue in Derbent, Dagestan republic. No one was hurt.

• March 2004: There was an explosion in the building of the Mekor Khaim Educational Center in Moscow. There were no injuries.

• March 2004: In Moscow the president of the World Congress of Mountain Jews, Zaur Bilalov, was shot.

• April 2004: Skinheads conducted a pogrom in the Jewish Cultural Center in Ulianovsk.

• April 2004: Unknown persons set fire to the synagogue in Cheliabinsk.

• October 2004: Skinheads, armed with steel bars, conducted an attack on the synagogue in Penza.

• January 2005: Two rabbis, Alexander Lakshin and Ruven Kuravsky, were beaten in Moscow in the Marinaia Rosha district.

• January 2005: Twenty deputies of the State Duma, members of the “Rodina” fraction and the communist party of the Russian federation, sent a letter to the prosecutor general of the Russian federation demanding prohibition of the activities of a number of Jewish organizations in Russia.  Despite public indignation, the prosecutor general did not find in the letter any infractions falling under article 292 of the Criminal Code of RF (incitement of national, racial, or religious enmity).