VANDALS DEFACE HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL IN ARMENIA

Dec 28, 2007
Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, DC

The way I feel about this is that they might have as well vandalized an Armenian Genocide memorial. I share the pain of every Jew who may read this and promise to spare no effort to remedy this kind of cowardly behaviour.

Unidentified vandals defaced a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in central Yerevan, Armenia last week, scrawling a swastika on the simple stone structure and splattering it with black paint, “The Jerusalem Post” reported on December 23.

Rabbi Gershon Burshtein, a Chabad emissary who serves as chief rabbi of the country's small Jewish community, expressed shock upon discovering the vandalism while escorting visitors to the site. After calling the police and local government officials to inform them of the incident, he said, “This is terrible, as there are excellent relations between Jews and Armenians." A senior adviser to Armenian President Robert Kocharian denounced the defacement as "a provocation."

In the past few years, the monument has been defaced and toppled several times. It is located a few blocks north of the centrally-located Republic Square, which is home to a number of government offices. Armenia's Jewish population is estimated at between 300 and 500 people, most of them in the capital Yerevan.

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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

JEWS WANT TO PARTICIPATE IN DECISION MAKING

24 September, 2007
A1+

“We have received no congratulation from the RA authorities on this great holiday. Despite the authorities’ indifference, we are punctual tax-payers and RA citizens,” Rima Varjapetyan, the head of Jewish community in Armenia, told A1+.

A few days ago the community celebrated Rosh Hashanah –Jewish New Year in Armenia. One of the popular practices of the holiday is Tashlikh ("casting off"). They walk to flowing water, such as a creek or river, in the afternoon and empty their pockets into the river, symbolically casting off their sins.

On the whole, the Jewish community is content with the country’s attention to national minorities.

“We would like to participate in decision makings and various actions in Armenia. Unfortunately, so far we have been denied participation,” Rima Varjapetyan said.

The Jews support Armenians in everything, especially in the recognition of the Genocide. In this regard they even came into conflict with the Jewish community of Azerbaijan.

“They attempt to support Azerbaijan in view of the Karabakh conflict resolution and intervene in its recognition. But I am more than convinced that they do it forcibly, against their will,” says the head of Jewish community in Armenia

According to Ms. Varjapetyan the two communities had better undertake a peacekeeping mission to promote dialogue between the two countries.

It is due to mention that the Armenian Jewish community is comprised of 300 members. Most of them live in Yerevan, Vanadzor and Gyumri. The community has carried out different cultural programmes over the past 16 years.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Jewish community of RA: God forbid Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh from Azeri goods

16.06.2007
PanARMENIAN.Net

"... even during the heaviest times of the community regime Armenia was among the few republics, where there wasn’t any place for anti-Semitism and where people treated well the national minorities –Russians, Jews, Kurds, Ezyds, Greeks, Assyrians and other nations, among them Azeris."

The Jewish community of Armenia has published an open latter, expressing its deep anger in it at the statements of Meir Bruk, the Chief Rabbi of European Jews of Azerbaijan. Head of the Jewish Community of Armenia Rimma Varzhapetyan, Chief Rabbi of Armenia Gershon Meir Burshtein and President of “Menora” cultural center Villy Veiner have undersigned the latter. The PanARMENIAN.Net brings the whole text of the letter.

“Baku based “Zerkalo” newspaper published G. Inandj’s article in its June 12, 2007 edition, where the other cites his interview with Meir Bruk, the Chief Rabbi of the European Jews of Azerbaijan. The above-mentioned article was also posted on the Internet. “Armenia is weak spiritually and economically, since there is no place for tolerance and indulgence there,” these are his words, which are placed in the preamble of the article.

“If the “opus” were introduced only on behalf of Inandj, we would not pay attention to it. There is a lot of dirt in Azeri press addressed to Armenia and it is impossible to react all of them.

It is another question, when the spiritual leader of Jews of Azerbaijan is busy with it, and not for the first time, by the way. It is not proper for him to talk profusely about political subjects, including the situation of Jews in Armenia and the State’s attitude towards them. He speaks about such subjects, where he is quite an ignoramus, of course if he does not realize a certain well-paid order from above. However, let’s analyze concrete statements made by Mr. Bruk.

1…”Heidar Aliev is the author of the modern ideology of tolerance in the process of building the state,” end of the quote. It looks like, because of his young age or may be inadequate education Mr. Bruk does not remember or does not know that continuing the policy of his predecessors on the leading posts of the country the “father of tolerance” used to do everything in order to make minority nations (fortunately, significantly lesser the Jews) either fully assimilate or leave their original places of residence. Let us not go into details. But it would be good if Mr. Bruk familiarized himself with statistic data on population of Azerbaijan at the moment, when the republic was first established at the beginning of the last century and now.

Where are the greater part of Lezghins, Ayrums, Karapapakhs, Kurds, Tats, Talyshs and other national minorities of Azerbaijan, not to mention the Armenians of Nakhichevan? Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh would suffer the same fate, Nagorno Karabakh, which Mr. Bruk calls on to return Azerbaijan. Or may be Mr. Bruk is not aware of Heidar Aliev’s statement when he occupied the post of the First Secretary of the Communist Party. Then he said that one of his major goals on the post of the First Secretary was to liberate Karabakh from Armenians. Not so bad “father of tolerance”. And today we witness the “tolerance policy” carried out by the successor of the father, Ilham Aliev. As a vivid example is the cruel murder of the Armenian officer in Hungary by idiot Safarov, who has become a national hero in Azerbaijan. Fortunately, the world community has adequately condemned this act of violence.

For Mr. Bruk to know, even during the heaviest times of the community regime Armenia was among the few republics, where there wasn’t any place for anti-Semitism and where people treated well the national minorities –Russians, Jews, Kurds, Ezyds, Greeks, Assyrians and other nations, among them Azeris.

And verbiage of Bruk that there are few Jews in Armenia because there aren’t any conditions for national and religions tolerance in that country, are at least illiteracy. Even if we take the figure (200) presented by Mr. Bruk for the Jewish population of Armenia, which he has spun out of thin air, it does not speak in his favor. How can we understand the fact that in case of actual absence of Jews in Armenia and national and religious tolerance there are officially registered four Jewish public, religious and cultural organizations in the republic, which are recognized by all world Jewish organizations. Here we have a working synagogue headed by the Chief Rabbi of Armenia. The Chief Rabbi of Azerbaijan must know this fact taking into account his the post he occupies.

2… “Armenians see the economic and political prosperity of Azerbaijan and there is nothing left for them than to take that model as an example”, end of quotation. Not so bad example. Only a quite waning man may think that Armenia or another country may take as an example the political model of Azerbaijan. Doesn’t Mr. Bruk know the opinion of the European Parliament on countless violations of democratic bases and human rights committed by Azerbaijan, the continuing political and judicial prosecutions of any kind of dissent?

And of course God forbid Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh from goods that Mr. Bruk promises them in case if Armenia returns Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Nobody here has forgotten Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku, and Karabakh. People in other countries, including Israel too remember those “goods”.

We think that the wise Rabbi has forgotten that his and our mission is in peacekeeping and helping our countries to settle the accumulated problems on the level of popular diplomacy, and not in compressing the complex relations between the two neighbors, which are intense and without it. Our mission is not to become marionettes in the hands of certain political and financial bosses.

At the end we’d like to draw the attention of the whole European community, public and religions International Jewish Organizations that Jews of Armenia are deeply irritated at the above-mentioned article. We think that similar statements made by an official religions leader, Mr. Bruk, are of quite provocative character, they promote ethnic discord and are contrary to the tolerance policy declared by those organizations. We hope that actions of Mr. Bruk will receive adequate evaluation and condemnation.”

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.