August 18, 2005
Vandals have desecrated a memorial to Jewish victims killed by Nazi occupiers in Belarus. It was the third time the monument honoring the "Yama" site, where Jews from the Minsk ghetto were shot, has been desecrated. Yakov Basin, vice-president of the Union of Jewish Organizations in Belarus, said the vandals had set fire to wreaths and scattered stones placed on the graves of victims. "We have made a statement to the prosecutor's office, but there is of course little hope that anyone responsible will be found," Basin was quoted by "Reuters" as saying. "It is not easy to investigate cemetery vandalism. And it is unlikely anyone will go looking for them." Former Soviet Union states, particularly Russia, have witnessed a rise in anti-Semitic acts in recent years. Vandals had already struck at the Yama site in 1992 and 2003. Belarus was among the ex-Soviet states to have suffered the greatest losses in the war, with one in four of its inhabitants being killed in more than three years of occupation.
