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In a Ukrainian city liberated from Russia, local Jewish leaders are being accused of collaboration
(JTA) — When Russian troops poured across the Ukrainian border in March, thousands fled from the cities that would be first in their path. But in Kherson, the southern port city with strategic value to the Russians, Rabbi Yosef Itzhak Wolff decided to stay put.
His decision to remain put him in line with the philosophy of his Jewish movement, Chabad, whose rabbis typically commit to the cities where they are stationed and stay there through thick and thin.
But his decision could also cost him the ability to serve Kherson’s Jews. According to a report this week in the New York Times, Wolff is now in Germany, concerned because some in Kherson accuse him of collaborating with the Russian forces.
Meanwhile, a member of his Jewish community is facing life in prison over his actions during the chaotic early days of the war, according to the New York Times report.
Russia captured Kherson on March 2, 2022, and for months, the city suffered a brutal occupation that resulted in hundreds dead and scores more “disappeared” or tortured, according to Human Rights Watch.
Among those living in the occupied city was Wolff, an Israel-born rabbi who arrived in Ukraine nearly 30 years ago, just after the fall of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence. For the past 13 years, he had presided over a Jewish community in Kherson estimated before the war at 8,000 people.
In the early days of the war, Wolff’s work to supply food, medicine and at least some semblance of a joyous Purim to his community was highly publicized.
During one trip, the Times of Israel reported, he dodged bullets shuttling food back to the city from the border with Crimea, where his brother is also a rabbi. In another, according to Chabad.org, he went out to deliver food even as Russian tanks rolled through the town.
“Despite heavy fighting in the streets of Kherson, Rabbi Yosef Wolff did not abandon his community for a moment, remaining in the war-torn city through it all and serving the local population,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for the Chabad movement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He called Wolff a “true hero of the Jewish people and for people of good conscience everywhere.”
Before the Holocaust, Kherson was a major center of Jewish life, with some 26 synagogues, but now, there is only Wolff’s. And before the war, it was like Chabad centers around the world: serving a local community, but also famously welcoming to unfamiliar faces, including foreign visitors.
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolff and mayor of Kherson Volodymyr Mykolaienko light Hanukkah candles, Dec. 19, 2017, in Kherson, Ukraine. (PLes Kasyanov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Opening the doors to newcomers took on added gravity after the war began and Russians streamed into Kherson. For much of the year, it was unclear whether Ukraine would regain control of the city, or whether it would become like Crimea and remain under Russian occupation. But last month, Ukraine liberated Kherson, generating scenes of jubilation — and putting anyone perceived as collaborating with the Russian army under suspicion.
Some of that suspicion landed on Wolff, who had allowed Russian soldiers to pray in his synagogue. The soldiers were Jewish officers who had arrived with armed guards, he told the New York Times.
In the days after liberation, he left Kherson, and Ukraine, for Germany. Now, with efforts to penalize collaborators underway, he told the newspaper that he is not sure when or if he will return.
Among those who remained in Kherson was a prominent member of the Jewish community who is now being prosecuted for his choices amid the messy reality of occupation.
Illia Karamalikov, a nightclub owner and member of Kherson’s city council, was close to Wolff, frequently allowing Chabad to use his nightclub’s space for events, the rabbi told the New York Times.
In the early days of the occupation, Kherson descended into a state of lawlessness. The Ukrainian civil administration fled ahead of the Russian forces and, after conquering the city without much resistance, Russia took little responsibility for its administration, instead sending soldiers on to other targets such as neighboring regions of Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih — Ukrainian president Voldymyr Zelensky’s hometown — and ultimately, Kyiv.
Looting was rampant, and cut off from power and supply lines, the thousands of people who remained in the city faced a real risk of starvation.
It was locals who managed to bring back some semblance of order. Karamalikov helped organize a 1,200-strong community patrol to enforce curfews and watch for looters.
A boy stands with Ukrainian flag in the central square of Kherson after the city was liberated from Russian occupation, Nov. 19, 2022. (Oleksii Samsonov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
It was in that role, according to the New York Times report, that he found himself face to face with a lost and confused Russian pilot, whom his men had taken into captivity. Karamalikov held the prisoner in a utility closet in his home for a night, before ultimately making the decision to return him to the Russian forces unharmed.
That earned him a 12-page indictment from Ukraine, as he ran afoul of new laws enacted at the outbreak of the war that stipulate that “cooperation with the aggressor state, its armed formations, or its occupation administration;” are punishable as acts of collaboration under Ukraine’s criminal code.
Many of those who spoke to the New York Times said the laws don’t account for the reality of living under occupation.
“All these people who ran away are judging us,” Wolff told the newspaper. “These are cruel times.”
Through returning the soldier, Karamalikov allegedly “organized the further participation of a Russian serviceman in aggression against Ukraine,” according to his indictment.
But many in Kherson are not sure what other option they had. Karamalikov’s community watch organization was a volunteer and non-military force whose limited power involved pressing looters into doing community service. To have harmed the soldier would have made them combatants against Russia.
“We wondered later: Should we have killed the soldier and kept it secret?” one of Karamalikov’s watchmen, Andriy Skvortsov told the New York Times. “But I’ve decided no, that wouldn’t have been good.”
“With a life in his hands, I can’t imagine Illia ever killing anyone,” Wolff told the newspaper. “What he did was the most humane decision he could make.”
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Pomona College Agrees to Settlement Over Civil Rights Complaint Alleging Antisemitism on Campus
A pro-Hamas activist posts a banner near an encampment to demonstrate at the Claremont Colleges on May 7, 2024, in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Qian Weizhong via Reuters Connect
Pomona College in Claremont, California, has settled a civil rights complaint which accused school officials of having “permitted severe discrimination of Jewish students” in the months which followed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, and Hillel International were part of the coalition of civil rights groups that brought legal action on behalf of Jewish students. According to a statement they released this week, the settlement calls for the college’s adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, updating its non-discrimination policy to stress that antisemitism is verboten, and hiring a new official to manage the college’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“After Oct. 7, Jewish and Israeli students and teachers across the country were forced to live in fear on their own campuses. But there were many, including those at Pomona, who exemplified strength and stood up to the bigotry and hatred that threatened them,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement commenting on the resolution of the case. “The action steps outlined in this settlement will address the blatant and egregious antisemitism faced by Pomona’s students, therefore protecting students from facing similar treatment in the future. And we hope it encourages others to take legal action against those who violate our constitutional rights.”
Pomona College president Gabrielle Starr issued her own statement on Wednesday, saying, “Antisemitism has persisted for thousands of years, and this settlement is not a one-size-fits-all toolkit. It’ll be up to our community to put it in place — and to live it. We will work with the Executive Committee of the Faculty, Staff Council, and [Associated Students of Pomona College] to navigate the complexities and challenges together. I am grateful to their leadership in these times.”
The settlement announcement comes just over a month after Pomona College, working with its sister institutions in the Claremont consortium of liberal arts colleges in California (5C), imposed severe disciplinary sanctions on some of the members of a pro-Hamas student group who attempted to raid a campus Jewish event held to commemorate the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre, which claimed the lives of 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages being kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, footage of the incident showed the group, whose members concealed their faces with keffiyeh scarves, attempting to storm the event venue while screaming expletives and pro-Hamas slogans. They ultimately failed due to the prompt response of the Claremont Colleges Jewish chaplain and other attendees who formed a barrier in front of the door to repel them, a defense they were forced to mount on their own because campus security personnel did nothing to stop the disturbance.
Later, the group behind the incident issued a disturbing open letter on social media.
“Satan dared not look us in the eyes,” the note said, while attacking event guests and Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga. “Immediately, zionists [sic] swarmed us, put their hands on us, shoved us, while Viloga retreated like he did on October 7th, 2023.”
Appearing to threaten murder, the group added, “We let that coward know he and his fascists settler ideology are not welcome here nor anywhere. zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly [sic].”
After an exhaustive investigation which drew in every member of the 5C, Pomona College determined that two of the young people involved in the raid are enrolled in sister schools it would not identify due to privacy laws. It has banned them from the Pomona campus. Two other individuals remain at large.
“Given the gravity of the alleged offense — and the published statement that has raised significant concerns about similar disruptions in the future — I have initiated an interim campus ban for both individuals, pending further inquiries, and in line with our policy,” Starr said in her last update on the matter. “The alleged behavior here is serious, and to ensure an appropriate adjudication is reached, the college is committed to maintaining a fair process.”
She added, “I assure you that Pomona hopes for — and will advocate for — an outcome that ensures our campuses are free of the kind of targeted harassment we witnessed.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Bill to Help Recovery of Nazi-Looted Art Passes US Senate Unanimously, Heads to House of Representatives
A drone view of the “Arbeit macht frei” gate at the former Auschwitz concentration camp ahead of the 80th anniversary of its liberation, Oswiecim, Poland, Jan. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
The US Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a bill that would help Holocaust survivors and their families reclaim artwork stolen by Nazis during World War II.
The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (Hear) Act of 2025 updates and expands on the original 2016 HEAR Act, which created a six-year window for a Holocaust survivor or their family to file a legal claim starting from the time they discovered the location of their stolen art. The 2016 HEAR Act is set to expire at the end of 2026.
The new bill passed by the Senate this week clarifies legal protections for Holocaust survivors and their families who are seeking the return of art looted by the Nazis by making sure that their claims are considered based on factual merits and not dismissed due to legal deadlines or time-based technicalities. The new bill states that if a Holocaust survivor or their family members file a claim within six years of discovering their artwork’s location, their case cannot be dismissed just because of how much time has passed.
The bill now heads to the House of Representatives, and if it’s passed there, it will be sent to US President Donald Trump to be signed into law.
“This bipartisan effort will assist Holocaust survivors and their families who are seeking the return of artwork now held in museums and collections across the United States,” said Mark Weitzman, chief operating officer of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which supports world Jewry in pursuing claims for the restitution of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust.
“By clarifying and strengthening the legal framework, the bill helps ensure that these claims can be evaluated on their merits, advancing justice and accountability,” added Weitzman. “The bill now moves to the House of Representatives, and we encourage swift support to bring us closer to ensuring that claims for Nazi-looted art can be heard on their merits.”
The bill was cosponsored by US Sens John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Fetterman (D-PA), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), and Katie Britt (R-AL). Cornyn spearheaded the 2016 HEAR Act.
“The thousands of missing pieces of art looted from Jewish families by Hitler’s regime during the Holocaust are a painful reminder of a time when cruelty and hatred reigned,” Cornyn said in a released statement. “This legislation renews our commitment to Holocaust survivors and their families by ensuring cases are heard on their merit, offering a path to restitution and assurance that such injustices are never forgotten.”
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Middle East Scholars Hope New Book on Oct. 7 Will Combat the ‘Promotion of Fallacies on Campus’
Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University in New York City, US, April 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
A consortium of Middle East scholars, as well as one student, has published a new book examining the impact of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel on geopolitics, media, and the landscape of higher education, The Algemeiner recently learned.
Edited by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East executive director Asaf Romirowsky and Smith College professor Donna Robinson-Divine, the book, titled October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds, includes essays by esteemed thinkers such Andrew Fox, KC Johnson, and Alex Joffe and it has already been acclaimed by professors representing higher education institutions across the Western world, from the University of California, Berkeley in the US to Kings College London in the United Kingdom.
On Friday, The Algemeiner spoke with Romirowsky and Robinson-Divine for nearly two hours to discuss their hopes for the project. One hope, they said, is breaking higher education’s dialogue on the Middle East out of a conceptual prison in which the convulsions of campus activism preclude careful analysis of a region whose rich history and effect on global stability demand seriousness. Wars Over Words and Deeds, they said, achieves this objective by contributing to “the academy” sound scholarship on the Middle East which respects the complexities it has posed to statesmen, scholars, and presidents since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the conclusion of World War I.
“We saw constantly a dearth of information and the promotion of fallacies on campus — a kind of rapid fire of lies and disinformation. We felt that we needed to actually look at the question of Israel and the Middle East from a rigorous academic standpoint,” Romirowsky said. “As historians, politic scientists, and analysts, we came together as a group to actually look at the historical patterns of behavior and historical evidence and describe the events which led up to Oct. 7 and what has transpired since.”
As previously reported by the Algemeiner, since the Oct. 7 massacre college faculty and students have treated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the subject of regional order in the Middle East, as a political and ideological issue, holding rallies, occupying buildings, and demanding sweeping policy changes such as divestment from Israel and the expulsion of Jewish academics. In dozens of incidents documented by The Algemeiner, they translated their zeal into speech which drew from Nazi-era rhetoric and other classic antisemitic tropes.
These activists have created an unusual convergence of interests connecting political Islamists, classical, white supremacist antisemites, and even far-left activists who advocate non-heteronormative gender roles and sexualities, Robinson-Divine noted.
“Anti-Zionism seems to be a vehicle for cementing ties between progressives who might not otherwise share a policy consensus,” she explained. “Muslim activists might have little in common with LGTBQ activists striving freedom and expanding social rights but they can unite around the issue of Israel.”
A coalition comprising factions which are normally at odds over the biggest political questions can only arise in a climate of deception, she noted.
“The incentives for distorting terms and concepts, for pushing an agenda, have been powerful over the past 10 years,” Robinson-Divine continued. “Higher education confers valuable material and social rewards to those who join the anti-Israel movement. But there are people who want information and accuracy, and I haven’t entirely despaired.”
One of the issues explored by The Wars Over Words and Deeds is the anti-Zionist left’s denial of reports that Hamas fighters sexually assaulted men and women on Oct. 7 and continued to do so after the fact to hostages it kidnapped and transported to Gaza. The Yale Daily News, for example, helped to popularize this denialism in higher education in November 2023, when it censored a column which discussed the sexual assault, calling the accounts of victims “unsubstantiated” — an outrage for which it later apologized.
“What is interesting about some Western responses to Oct. 7 is that groups which fall on the liberal side or the political spectrum, who claim to be invested in the well-being of women and disposed peoples,’ contribute to mass dehumanization which enables conditions for horrific gender-based violence to occur on nationalistic grounds,” writes Smith College student Skylar Ball in her contribution to the book. “When we turn our backs on truth, we enable dehumanization, and we subsequently turn our backs on humanity.”
Romirowsky, Robinson-Divine, and the scholars they brought together have a tall task, as anti-Zionist extremism in higher education has proven to be infectious.
Just last month, a New York City college saw a portentous incident in which a student and local imam disrupted an interfaith event by issuing a verbal fatwa which called for imposing sharia law on Americans, defended amputating the limbs of misdemeanor level criminals and the wealthy, and denigrated a Jewish co-panelist, Baruch College professor Ilya Bratman.
“If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately,” said Abdullah Mady, who is enrolled in the Master’s in Translational Medicine (MTM) program. “Sharia … stands against the oppressor. When sharia is implemented, pornography — gone. Alcohol industry — gone. Gambling system — gone. Interest is gone, which is what they use to enslave you.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.