Unidentified people desecrated the Holocaust monument late Sunday, February 18, 2007 with red swastikas and with an inscription: "Congratulations on the Holocaust."

KIEV (EJP)--- A monument to Holocaust victims and hundreds of graves have been defaced with swastikas in a Jewish cemetery in Odessa, southern Ukraine, local police said.

Unidentified people desecrated the Holocaust monument late last Sunday with red swastikas and with an inscription:"Congratulations on the Holocaust".

"There are also swastikas on hundreds graves, up to one thousand according to diverse informations," Boleslav Kapulkin, a spokesman for Odessa's Jewish community, told reporters.

"It is awful. They insulted all Ukrainians and hurt Ukraine's image," Kapulkin added.

"It's a planned operation as the monument and the cemetery are in two different locations," he said.

He said such incident is rather rare in the city which is home of a large Jewish community since centuries.

60,000 Jews

About 60,000 Jews live in the Black Sea port city. Its mayor, Edward Gurvitz, is Jewish.

	Avraham Wolf, chief rabbi of Odessa and southern Ukraine, told EJP he rather believes that "this is not hooliganism" but "purely anti-Semitic".

The monument was erected at the site where thousands of Jews were killed and burned by the Nazis between 1941-1944.

It is reported that police launched a probe into the "hooliganism".

But Avraham Wolf, chief rabbi of Odessa and southern Ukraine, told EJP he rather believes that this act is "purely anti-Semitic". "It's terrible. Even to die they don't leave us," he said.

According to him, police has promised to find the authors within two days.

Ukrainian sociologists recently expressed concern about a rise in xenophobic attitudes in the country over the last years.

Ukraine is home to about 450,000 Jews, one of the largest Jewish community in the world.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews perished over the centuries in pogroms staged by Ukrainian nationalists, and millions died during the Holocaust.

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