Firebomb hurled at Ukrainian synagogue

Separately, unidentified individuals scrawl anti-Semitic slogans on a Jewish community building, also in Lviv

Unidentified individuals hurled a firebomb at a synagogue in Lviv and, in a separate incident, wrote anti-Semitic slogans on another Jewish community building in the western Ukrainian city.

The incident involving a firebomb occurred on June 30 but was discovered only Monday, according to the Strana news site. The perpetrators may have aimed the firebomb at a window of the synagogue on Mikhovsky Street but missed it, hitting the building facade, the director of the Chesed-Arieh Jewish group, Ada Dianova, told Strana.

The contents of the firebomb fell to the foot of the building and burned there, resulting in no damage to the interior, she added. No one was hurt in the incident.

The anti-Semitic slogans painted on a former building of the community on Sholem Aleichem Street included the words” “Down with Jewish power” and: “Jews, remember July 1,” an apparent reference to a pogrom that took place in Lviv on that date in 1941.

Lviv City officials release image of city's Holocaust memorial defaced with neo-Nazi graffiti on June 21, 2017. (Courtesy Lviv City Hall) — Lviv City officials release image of city’s Holocaust memorial defaced with neo-Nazi graffiti on June 21, 2017. (Courtesy Lviv City Hall)

In recent days, Jewish groups in Ukraine and abroad protested the municipality’s sponsoring of a celebration of Roman Shukhevych, a collaborator with the Nazis whose troops perpetrated the July 1 pogroms.

In Ukraine, many people admire Shukhevych because he fought Russian domination, alongside the Germans, before his UPA militia group turned also against the Germans.

Shortly before the celebration, titled Shukhevychfest and held on the nationalist’s 110th birthday, city officials in Lviv published online security camera footage of vandals painting Nazi symbols on a Holocaust memorial in a bid to identify them.