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German hotel workers probed over singers antisemitism allegations

FRANKFURT, Germany German prosecutors have opened an investigation into employees at a hotel after a rock musician made accusations of antisemitism against them in a video posted on social media.

The singer Gil Ofarim said in an emotional video published yesterday that two employees at the Westin hotel in Leipzig, in eastern Germany, had asked him to put away a Star of David pendant before he would be allowed to check in.

Two employees at the Westin were subsequently suspended while the accusations are investigated, a spokeswoman for the Marriott International hotel group says today.

Prosecutors are currently examining the accusations made against the hotel employees, say authorities in Leipzig.

At the same time, one of the accused files for defamation, describing the events very differently to the singer, according to a spokeswoman for the police.

The same individual reported threats made against him via his Instagram account.

Ofarim rejected the defamation allegation, saying that it was exactly like how I described it in the video.

I find it shameful and sad that I still have to justify and explain myself after such an incident, he tells Spiegel Online.

After the video was published yesterday, thousands of individuals gathered outside the hotel to demonstrate in solidarity with the singer and against antisemitism.

The German governments Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight against Anti-Semitism Felix Klein offered his sympathy and solidarity to Ofarim in an interview with the Funke media group.

It was good and important that the incident had been made public, Klein said, and showed the need for more education on antisemitism in Germany.

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Ukraine hosts memorial ceremony marking 80 years since Babi Yar massacre - The Times of Israel

80 years ago, around 34,000 Jews were lined up and killed in a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in the biggest Nazi mass killings during World War Two. They were then buried in mass graves and left for the world to forget.

More horrors followed the mass killings on September 29 and 30 as the Nazis continued to round up Jews, the mentally ill, Soviet prisoners, and others over the following years, killing up to 200,000 in total at Babi Yar.

The dark spot in history is, however, not forgotten. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has remembered it with civil memorials as a lesson of the past. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy laid flowers at the foot of the Menorah memorial, and another ceremony is planned for October 6.

Babi Yar. Two short words that sound like two short shots but carry long and horrible memories of several generations, Zelenskyy said at the memorial.

Anatoly Podolsky, the director at the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies in Kyiv, told Euronews that the Jewish population and others had no idea of what was coming back then due to the lack of information about the Nazi atrocities and anti-Semitism this early in the war.

That was due to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, the so-called MolotovRibbentrop Pact, signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.

Over the years, I have spoken to many from that time, and they had not seen it coming. During the German occupation in the First World War, many said that they were treated okay. They, therefore, didnt expect these atrocities to happen in the Second World War, says Podolsky, who says that the Soviet Union didnt inform the local population in Kyiv or Ukraine overall about what was coming.

One of the survivors of Babi Yar was Dina Pronicheva, who was ordered to march down in the ravine and undress before the shootings started. She avoided the fate of many others by jumping before the shootings and playing dead among the corpses.

She gasped for air as the Nazi SS soldiers started to cover the graves.

All around were standing fascists armed with submachine guns, Ukrainian policemen, and fierce dogs ready to tear a human apart, she testified after the war.

I pretended to be dead. Those who had been killed or wounded were lying under me and on top of me - many were still breathing, others were moaning. Suddenly I heard a child weeping and the cry: Mummy! I imagined my little girl crying, and I started to cry myself.

It was getting dark. Germans armed with submachine guns walked around, finishing off the wounded. I felt that somebody was standing above me, but I did not give any sign that I was alive, even though that was very difficult. Then I felt we were being covered with earth.

"I closed my eyes so that the soil would not get into them, and when it became dark and silent, literally the silence of death, I opened my eyes and threw the sand off me, making sure that no one was close by, no one was around, no one was watching me, Pronicheva said.

About 29 people are known to have survived Babi Yar, and Podolsky says that the atrocity still significantly impacts Jews and others living in Ukraine today. Many Jews, who fled their homeland, never returned, and the day is a way to remember history, he says.

Yaakov Dov Bleich is the chief rabbi in Ukraine and the vice-president of the World Jewish Congress. He said that remembering is vital for everyone.

This is not only a Jewish thing; it was a crime against humanity. They could have been doctors, nurses, engineers. They were people. They were killed because they were Jewish, but the significance is for all because of the hate.

"To wipe out an entire community in two days is something that is very hard for us, even today 80 years later, to understand, Bleich says.

The Ukrainian government plans to build a Holocaust Memorial Centre in Kyiv, which isnt getting support from everyone in Ukraine.

Podolsky says that the construction is controversial because the government is cooperating with a Russian organisation, while Bleich says that the plans are good as the families and the world will get a place to mourn.

Tens of thousands were killed. Hundreds of thousands or millions have families that died there. They had no place to go to pray; there are hundred thousand people without gravestones, Bleich said, It gives closure and peace.

While Ukrainians agree about atrocities at Babi Yar, the history of the Nazis and their occupation overall is a controversial topic in Ukraine, when it comes to other topics during the war. That is partly due to some Ukrainians opinion of controversial figures such as Stepan Bandera, explains Podolsky.

The Ukrainian government is considering giving the title Hero of Ukraine to Bandera because he fought for Ukrainian independence back in the 1930s and 1940s, but to others, he is an anti-Semitic war criminal who cooperated with the Nazis. His movement is accused of having killed up to 100,000 Jews and Poles during WW2. Bandera was, however, jailed for several years during the atrocities.

We need to be open about our history and the role of people such as Bandera in the Second World War, explains Podolsky, He is a hero for some, and we need to be open about Ukraines own role. I think that the atrocities in Babi Yar, which we all agree upon, can be a way for us to move away from the Ukrainian nationalist and also Soviet understanding of our history and into a more liberal and open understanding.

Bleich says that Ukraine has to deal with the legacy of people like Bandera, but he says that Ukraine has come a long way, and there isnt much anti-Semitism in Ukraine. Recently, Ukraine also approved a new law banning anti-Semitism.

It is important to get the balance and understand what is the heroization that he (Bandera) did. And we have to be able to say that they did things that were wrong. Some of these heroes did participate in crimes against humanity, and Ukraine has to decide whom they want for heroes,

It is important to take everything in the proper context. For that we need historians. (To answer) how, why, and what happened. Something Ukraine is working on as well, but it is taking time for them.

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Babi Yar: 80 years after Nazi massacre, its ghosts still haunt Ukraine - Euronews

The Ukrainian local NGO Zaporizhzhia Roma Center Lacho Drome carried out from February to July 2021 a project on trining for humn rights mediators in 4 cities of the Zaporizhzhia d Dnepropetrovsk regions of Ukraine, with the support of the EU Council of Europe project Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes in the Eastern Partnership.

What started as a small local project of basic human rights training for local mediators and an attempt to build bridges between representatives of local authorities and police and Roma people, emerged into a success story of empowerment and a working model that can be used in other small cities. The two target regions chosen for the project were characterised by a quite big Roma population with very low involvement in the civil society movement and little contacts with local authorities outside the big cities. These are Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia where the NGO Lacho Drome'' works. The main idea was to build and empower the network of Roma activists - mediators in smaller cities and equip them with instruments to build connections with local authorities and the police to make sure the latter hear what Roma communities in these cities need in cases of discrimination. Mediators were supposed to serve as a communication bridge between Roma communities in small cities and authorities.

This project was designed to address two big problems - Roma people are not communicating their human rights violations using formal channels and local authorities ignore the needs and constraints of Roma communities as they lack information and pressure.

The first stage of the project was to train Roma mediators in teams of two persons in each of the 4 cities - Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kamianske and Pologi. Local police, first of all patrol service and representatives of the Department of the Preventive Activities, were invited to the second stage, together with local representatives of the Ombudsman and the Department of Culture, Nationalities and Religion.

The second step was to build communication bridges between teams of mediators and local authorities, through sessions of joint discussion of the local issues and preparing action plans. Each city developed and formalised a list of tasks for further cooperation. These were short and specific local plans of feasible actions to be fulfilled during 6 months of the project implementation, to serve as a first attempt of formalising cooperation between the national minority and local authorities which was never so formal and close before. These small local plans have been a great tool of starting the communication between the communities and local authorities based on local needs and resources.

The third step of the project was awareness raising activities in local Roma communities and monitoring of human rights violations conducted by the mediators in their communities. These monitoring activities brought two important results. First, the awareness of the community members was increased and there is now a possibility for them to have a contact point to report human rights violations. This is the first step on the long path of empowering Roma communities to formally report human rights abuses to the authorities in the future. The second project result is the number and quality of cases collected, which show valuable data about the variety of discrimination attitudes Roma face in the regions and specific areas the mediators will work in the future after the project completion. 109 cases were collected in less than half a year in two regions of Ukraine and they show many different faces of discrimination Roma face daily - in education, in labour and on the streets. The project also has some success stories when mediators helped Roma people to formally complain to authorities in order to restore violated rights.

This project was organised with the support of the project Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate crime and hate speech in the Eastern Partnership, funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in the framework of the Partnership for Good Governance Programme (PGG II).

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Empowering the Roma communities to stand against discrimination in Ukraine - Council of Europe

WASHINGTON President Biden on Wednesday assured Ukraines president that the United States remained opposed to Russian aggression in the region, using an Oval Office meeting to affirm his support for a leader unnerved by Americas chaotic exit from Afghanistan.

The meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine also allowed Mr. Biden to send a message to Russia that he was committed to standing by a strategic partner that Moscow has invaded.

The partnership between our nations grows stronger and its going to become even stronger, Mr. Biden said, noting the two countries had a similar value system that included a commitment to a Europe that was whole, free and at peace.

Despite a delay of a few days, due in part to the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan, Mr. Zelensky finally got the Oval Office reception he had been seeking since his election in 2019. His earlier efforts to secure such a meeting with President Donald J. Trump led to Mr. Zelensky unwittingly becoming entangled in an international incident that led to Mr. Trumps first impeachment trial.

Mr. Zelensky, for his part, thanked the United States for a new $60 million defense aid package and said he wanted to focus on security issues, including the Russian occupation of Crimea.

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Speaking through a translator, he expressed condolences for the 13 U.S. service members killed last week in Afghanistan. We are very compassionate, since we have been dealing with such tragic losses for eight years in a row, Mr. Zelensky said, referring to those killed fighting in eastern Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists.

During the meeting, Mr. Biden also told Mr. Zelensky that he wanted to travel to Ukraine, which no American president has visited since President George W. Bush in 2008. Mr. Biden visited Ukraine regularly as vice president.

A show of support may be necessary. Ukrainians have been discouraged as they have watched Americas unruly and abrupt exit from Afghanistan. Their worry is that commitments, understandings and confidence that theyve had from and with the United States could be jeopardized by this, said William B. Taylor Jr., who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine between 2006 and 2009, and who was a star witness during Mr. Trumps first impeachment trial.

They almost desperately want to believe that the longtime support for Ukraine, over administrations of all kinds, is going to persist, he said. But they cant help but be concerned when they see the United States quickly, and with some disarray, pulling out of a country where weve been for 20 years.

Mr. Bidens objective ahead of the meeting was to demonstrate a clear commitment to Ukraines sovereignty, officials said. The decision to allow Mr. Zelensky to be only the second European leader to visit the White House since Mr. Bidens inauguration sent a strong signal that Ukraine remains a priority for the administration.

Aug. 24, 2021, 4:52 p.m. ET

Supporting Ukraine is critical for an administration that has made strengthening democratic norms at home and abroad as a key objective, foreign policy experts said.

Mr. Biden also signed off on a new $60 million aid package with Ukraine that included Javelin anti-armor missiles and other lethal weapons, an official said, and announced new agreements on security, energy and climate coordination after bilateral meetings with the visiting Ukrainian delegation.

The Biden administration has now provided more than $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine this year, an official said.

The Trump administration also provided lethal weapons to Ukraine, reversing a decision not to do so by the Obama administration, when Mr. Biden was vice president. Former President Barack Obama limited American aid to Ukraine to nonlethal items like body armor, night-vision goggles and first aid kits, to avoid tempting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to raise the stakes.

The Biden administration was also expected to sign a revised strategic defense framework to boost cooperation on security, cybersecurity and intelligence sharing, setting the stage for closer cooperation that will improve the capabilities of the Ukrainian military, officials said.

Overall, however, Mr. Bidens record on Ukraine has been mixed, experts said. The administration dropped its efforts earlier this year to block the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will transport natural gas directly from Russia to Germany, allowing Russia to bypass Ukraine and deprive it of revenue from transit fees.

In a joint statement released after the meeting, both countries stated that they continue to oppose Nord Stream 2, which we view as a threat to European energy security.

The Biden administration has also not yet announced a nominee to serve as ambassador to Ukraine, a position that has remained vacant since 2019 when Marie L. Yovanovitch was ousted from her job for apparent disloyalty to Mr. Trump.

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Biden Affirms Support for Ukraine Against 'Russian ...

WASHINGTON President Biden welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House on Wednesday and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted that first son Hunter Bidens well-paid work in the poor post-Soviet country would not be discussed by the leaders.

Biden and Zelensky took no questions from reporters after exchanging pleasantries in the Oval Office. They then met privately for nearly two hours.

Bidens predecessor President Donald Trump was impeached by House Democrats in 2019 for asking Zelensky to look into Hunter Bidens reported $83,000 per month position on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, despite no relevant industry experience.

He was later acquitted in the Senate.

Psaki curtly gave a single-word answer no when National Public Radio reporter Scott Detrow asked her during her daily press briefing if Biden intended to discuss his sons work with Zelensky.

Detrow asked Psaki, The events, the demands, the phone calls that led up to the 2019 impeachment Im just wondering, did they factor in any way in the way the White House prepared for this meeting, specifically the fact that Hunter Biden was a key part of those conversations with the last administration and Zelensky? And did President Biden expect in any way, shape or form to address that dynamic in todays meeting?

The first son, who is currently offering to sell his novice artworks to anonymous buyers for up to $500,000, joined Burismas board in 2014 while his then-vice president father led the Obama administrations Ukraine policy. He reportedly left the company in 2019.

Hunter Bidens reported income of nearly $1 million per year for advising Burisma came despite Ukraines intense poverty. The countrys annual per capita GDP is less than $4,000, according to World Bank data.

The White House daily schedule said Biden intended to discuss with Zelensky our backing for [his] efforts to tacklecorruptionand implement a reform agenda based on our shared democratic values.

But there was no mention of corruption during a brief press availability in the Oval Office.

The presidents involvement with his sons overseas business deals often is murky. But The Post reported in October that an email recovered from a laptop formerly belonging to Hunter Biden indicated he introduced his father to a Burisma executive in 2015 despite Bidens 2019 claim that I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.

The Biden campaign said last year that no such meeting happened as described, but this year The Post published additional records indicating that the visiting Burisma exec likely met Biden at Cafe Milano in DCs Georgetown neighborhood at a dinner with various other foreign business partners of the then-second son also in attendance.

The public portion of Bidens meeting with Zelensky contained familiar foreign policy themes and made little news.

Biden vowed that the US was firmly committed to Ukraines independence in the face of Russian aggression.

The United States remains firmly committed to Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression, Biden said at the start of the long-awaited meeting with Zelensky.

Today were going to discuss how the US can continue to support Ukraine as it advances its democratic reforms agenda, he said.

Biden did not answer shouted questions about Afghanistan, even amid fierce criticism of his handling of the US military withdrawal and a leaked phone call he had with ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in which he asked Ghani to create the perception that the Taliban werent winning, whether its true or not.

Bidens meeting with Zelensky was quietly postponed two days ago as a result of the chaotic exit of US troops from Afghanistan.

In 2019, Trump urged the Ukrainian leader to investigate Biden and his son for alleged corruption as Zelensky asked for a White House invitation. The Senate lateracquitted him of abuse of power.

Zelensky on Wednesday pushed Biden for increased military aid, COVID-19 vaccine donations and backing for Ukraines bid forNATO membership.

I would like to discuss with President Biden here his vision, his governments vision of Ukraines chances to join NATO and the timeframe for this accession, if it is possible, Zelensky said in the Oval Office.

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Biden hosts Ukraine president, Psaki says 'No' to talk of ...