Incidents of Anti-Semitism of Concern to Soviet Jews

Vandals reportedly smashed Jewish tombstones at a cemetery west of Moscow, and Jewish residents of the Soviet capital said they fear anti-Semitic incidents during celebrations of the millennium of Christianity here.

At least one Jewish family said it planned to move out of Moscow for fear of attacks against Jews by an anti-Semitic group using the celebration, which starts next week, as an excuse.

Moscow News, a weekly that has been at the forefront of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s glasnost policy of greater openness, reported in its May 29 edition that two drunks smashed 16 tombstones and damaged 30 others. The newspaper claimed that the May 15 incident in a Jewish section of Vostryakovo Cemetery was not motivated by anti-Semitism.

Blamed on Hooliganism

“The investigators, after the most thorough checkups, failed to discover any data that would testify to the criminals’ nationalistic motives, or to some sort of settling of accounts,” the newspaper said. “So I’m convinced that this was a case of drunken hooliganism and not an anti-Semitic action,” wrote Moscow News reporter Andrei Gurkov.

Cemetery workers restored the tombstones at a cost of thousands of rubles, the newspaper said.

Avi Weiss, a leader of American Jewish groups, said Moscow Jews told him they were concerned about possible anti-Semitic activities during the millennium celebration. A bulletin of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, based in Washington, D.C., also reported such fears.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov was asked at a news conference Monday about the cemetery vandalism. He said he didn’t know about it but that “of course these people should be brought to justice.”

Sergei Grigoryants, a dissident journalist in Moscow, said in mid-May that he had heard reports that leaflets denouncing Jews had been circulating in the capital. The source of the leaflets was unknown.

Anti-Semitic Group Named

A 29-year-old Moscow Jew who is sending his family to Lithuania for safety said he suspects the ultranationalist, anti-Semitic group Pamyat is behind the campaign.

“One of Pamyat’s major points is that Jews spoil their lives. . . ,” said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The man said an acquaintance reported that a group of unidentified people warned the owner of a dacha in Ilinsky, a Moscow suburb, not to rent the country house to Jews “or we will burn it down.”

Other dachas are largely unoccupied because of fears of anti-Semitic attacks, he said.