Bridge Education Abroad Institute is a fast growing study abroad institute, based in the state of Maryland, United States of America. Our institute plans short programs all across the world, to provide students with unique opportunities to experience different political cultures while strengthening their leadership and diplomacy skills. Our programs draw a diverse group of students together from all over the world to discuss pressing global issues while exchange cultural values. In a rapidly globalizing world, we believe these experiences are invaluable to the success of students in the global job market.

Our programs differ from the traditional semester or yearlong study abroad programs in that ours are about two weeks long. Many busy students who cannot arrange long trips abroad will find that our programs present an opportunity for international experiences they before could not schedule.

For the summer of 2013, we have one program scheduled in Kiev, Ukraine during the dates July 22nd – August 02nd, 2013. This program will include lectures from experienced professors and guest speakers from all over the globe, including the United States of America. The students will enrich their knowledge of Ukraine’s history, international politics, and economics while also enjoying travel to famous and historic places. We also encourage students to get to know one another and share cultural values through planned social events.

Please inform them to contact us via info@beainstitute.org.

Thank you very much for your support, and to find more information about our program, you may visit www.beainstitute.org.

At the appointed moment, they remove their windbreakers to reveal white T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Beat the kikes.” Their jackets carry the name of Svoboda, the ultranationalist Ukrainian political party.

A small riot quickly ensues. Angry protestors rip at the T-shirts, but the Svoboda-labeled men give as good as they get. One of the men beats Victor Smal, a lawyer and human rights activist, so savagely that he is rendered barely recognizable.

In the days after this April 6 melee, Svoboda denied that the provocateurs at the rally were their men. Yuriy Syrotiuk, a Svoboda parliamentarian, called the men criminals and complained that police were not responding to an act of incitement, Interfax reported. Some suggested the men were anti-Svoboda activists seeking to tarnish its image.

But denials notwithstanding, the incident has raised anxieties among Ukrainian Jews fearful of rising xenophobia and racially motivated violence they say is inspired by Svoboda, a party with neo-Nazi roots and a penchant for thuggery.

“Svoboda lifted the lid from the sewer of anti-Semitism in Ukraine and it’s spilling out,” said Joel Rubinfeld, co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament.

A U.S. State Department report this month singled out Ukraine, along with Hungary and Greece, as places of “concern” because of growing anti-Semitic parties. But open anti-Semitism is still rare in Ukraine. Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry documented just 15 cases of anti-Semitic violence in 2012. In France, the number was 200.

But the behavior of some Svoboda politicians risks changing that, some Ukrainian Jews worry.

Founded in 2004, Svoboda (“freedom” in Ukrainian) is the latest incarnation of the Social-National Party, a far-right movement ideologically aligned with Nazism. But while the Social-National Party never enjoyed any electoral success, Svoboda garnered more than 10 percent of the vote in the 2012 elections, becoming the country’s fourth-largest party.

“Svoboda is perhaps the biggest challenge facing Ukrainian Jewry today,” Ukrainian Jewish Committee President Oleksandr Feldman told JTA. “It has no structure and operates in a political vacuum and turmoil which allow it to run rampant.”

Svoboda’s unstructured nature also makes it difficult to pigeonhole. Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok has praised supporters for being the “worst fear of the Jewish-Russian mafia” and has called Jews “kikes.”

Yet the party also speaks admiringly of Israel, and Tyahnybok has made a point of advertising his meeting last December with Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine. Alexander Aronets, Svoboda’s press secretary, has praised Israel on his Facebook page as ”one of the most nationalistic countries in the world.”

Good relations with Israel may be desirable to Svoboda as a defense against accusations of anti-Semitism, a tactic employed by other European nationalist movements that have made overtures in Israel’s direction.

“They know anti-Semitism is preventing the good relations they seek,” said Moshe Azman, Ukraine’s Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi. “But Svoboda is not a uniform entity and I’m not sure the leaders control the rank and file.”

Feldman, an energetic businessman, lawmaker and founder of the Kyiv Interfaith Forum, says Svoboda has helped erode the shame associated with open expressions of anti-Semitism and other ethnic hatreds. His interfaith forum, which each year brings together hundreds of clerics from five faiths, was marred for the first time this year by a minor assault on a Muslim participant outside the conference.

“Svoboda is very frightening to Ukrainian Jews and other minorities because it is an ultra-Jobbik that evolved quickly,” Feldman said, referring to the anti-Semitic and Iran-friendly Hungarian party that also has enjoyed recent electoral success.

“We had hoped Svoboda would tone it down once it’s in parliament, but the opposite has happened,” said Vyacheslav Likhachev, a Ukrainian researcher with the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress. “The electoral gains have emboldened Svoboda lawmakers to incorporate thuggery as a modus operandi, a very dangerous development.”

One example came in February, when party member Igor Miroshnichenko shimmied up the towering statue of Vladimir Lenin in the town of Akhtyrka, threw a rope around the communist leader’s head, tied the other end to a truck and brought down the monument.

In December, the same man said Mila Kunis, a Ukrainian-American Jewish actress, was “no Ukrainian, but a kike.” Asked by a newspaper if Miroshnichenko could be prosecuted for making a racial insult, a Justice Ministry official said the word he used — “zhydovka,” a feminized version of kike — was permissible and part of the official vocabulary.

“This was another Svoboda success in poisoning the public sphere,” Likhachev says.

Svoboda officials declined several JTA requests for comment for this story.

In February, Likhachev signed a letter along with several other Jewish Ukrainians asking the Jewish Agency for Israel to cancel plans to hold its board of governors meeting in Kiev in June. The letter, which several Jewish leaders dismissed as overblown, said that poor democratic standards and Svoboda’s ascent made Kiev an ill-suited choice.

“Svoboda are riffraff — nothing comparable to Jobbik, which has its own militia and coherent policy,” said Yaakov Bleich, a Ukrainian chief rabbi.

“Svoboda is troubling as a symptom of the main challenges facing Ukrainian Jewry: the economic recession and political uncertainty,” Bleich said. Still, he added, “because Svoboda is a mob, it’s less predictable than Jobbik. Svoboda’s leaders may be unable to control anti-Semitic displays.”

Despite the disagreements, many Jewish leaders seem to agree that Svoboda’s success owes more to frustration with the establishment than to its anti-Semitic statements. Likhachev pointed specifically to the discontent that emerged in the wake of the Orange Revolution, the protests following the 2004 election that brought former president Viktor Yushchenko to power on a platform of greater government accountability.

Bickering and disunity cost Yushchenko the presidency in 2010. He was succeeded by Viktor Yanukovych, the man whom protestors accused five years earlier of election fraud. That development strengthened Svoboda in two ways, Likhachev says.

“First, it radicalized disgruntled voters,” Likhachev says. “Second, the opposition allies learned they needed to stay united to win. So they are willing to overlook Svoboda’s anti-Semitism — to the detriment of Ukrainian society and its Jewish population.”

Boris Slobodnyuk of Satanov received the forum’s 2013 Crystal Noah Tolerance Award on Tuesday at the Kiev Interfaith Forum for guarding the 500-year-old Stanovskaya synagogue in western Ukraine and initiating renovation work there.

For the past three years, the forum has brought together dozens of spiritual leaders from five faiths and 30 countries.

Oleksandr Feldman, a Ukrainian Jewish lawmaker who founded the forum in 2010, said Slobodnyuk, who is in his 50s, prevented area residents from taking apart the structure and last year secured funding from Jewish organizations to restore the ancient synagogue. He acted out of an inner sense of responsibility and for no pay, according to the committee that gave Slobodnyuk the prize.

With help from Arthur Friedman, a Jewish leader in the Khmelnitsky region, Slobodnyuk plans to help carry out renovation work next year on the rotten foundations of the structure, a former fortress and one of the largest synagogues in Ukraine. Interior repairs are scheduled to begin later.

There are hopes for a synagogue rededication in 2016.

“My message is, if you can’t help, at least don’t destroy,” Slobodnyuk told the crowd of 300-odd Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Muslims and Buddhists who attended the two-day gathering on “Faith’s Role in State, Government and Politics.” The participants are scheduled to visit the Ukrainian parliament on Wednesday.

Slobodnyuk received the award, which was given out for the first time, along with philosopher Miroslav Popovich and radio journalist Sergey Korotaevskiy.

A few dozen Orthodox Christians picketed outside the riverside hotel hosting the conference.

“There is no hate among us, but we cannot make common council with Muslims and Jews, this is heresy,” protester Dmitri Kroiter told JTA.

Ordered by the Representation to Ukraine of the American Union of Councils for the Jews in the Former Soviet Union, sponsored by the US Ambassador’s Grant.

The program is to incrementally (step by step) restore the synagogue “Turei Zahav” (Gildene Royze), Mykva, Beis Midrash.

The remnants of the Great Synagogue (the other synagogue in the same Jewish Quarter) will be planned to thoroughly studied by the archaeologists, upon the results the artifacts will be preserved as pieces of the Archaeological theatre. The space will be also used to display the Judaic and other Jewish artifacts, might be also a Jewish social Conference Hall.

http://cja.huji.ac.il/Architecture/architecture-Presentation-Taz.html

Embargoed until 0900 GMT, 11 April 2013

The Ukrainian authorities must  seize the current political opportunity  to stop the high level of torture and other ill treatment being carried out by its police force by creating a genuinely independent, impartial and effective institution to investigate complaints against the police, Amnesty International said in a report published today.

“Beatings and torture continue unabated in the Ukraine in spite of the new Criminal Procedure Code adopted by the government late last year. No concrete steps have been taken to set up an independent police accountability mechanism, allowing the police to get away with shocking levels of  mistreatment of detainees ,” said David Diaz-Jogeix, Europe and Central Asia Deputy Programme Director.

In a new report,  Ukraine: Don’t stop halfway: Government must use new Criminal Procedure Code to end torture ,  Amnesty International examines new cases of torture and other ill-treatment and calls on the government to seize the opportunity created by the new Criminal Procedure Code to establish a State Investigation Bureau as an effective deterrent to would-be torturers among the police.

The report brings to light new cases of police torture, highlighting how issues raised in previous reports are continuing in the Ukraine. Out of 114,474 complaints made to prosecutors about police treatment in 2012, only 1,750 were investigated, leading to only 320 prosecution cases being opened against 438 police officers.

The Prosecutor’s office is failing to conduct effective investigations into allegations of torture and other ill-treatment. Prosecutors work with police officers to solve ordinary crimes on a daily basis creating an inherent conflict of interest in asking them to investigate complaints against the police. 

Amnesty International has recommended that a fully resourced independent agency to investigate all allegations of human rights violations by law enforcement officers should be established. 

“Abuse by officials can only be prevented when they know they will be held to account for their actions and risk disciplinary or criminal punishment if they are found to be responsible for torture or other ill treatment,” said Diaz-Jogeix.

The new Criminal Procedure Code, introduced in November 2012, has the potential to curb widespread torture as it reduces the length of time suspects can be detained without charge, rendering them vulnerable to abuse or pressure by police officers. Confessions made to police while in custody outside the court are also no longer admissible in court. 

The Code envisages the creation of a State Investigation Bureau, which, if properly established, has the potential to ensure prompt, effective and impartial investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations committed by police officers.

“The creation of an independent police accountability mechanism would usher in a new era for Ukraine’s criminal justice system: an era in which the rights of detainees are respected and officials are held to account for unlawful actions,” said Diaz-Jogeix.

“This creates – in equal measure – an opportunity and a challenge for the Ukrainian people. They need to understand how the proposed new Code protects their rights and they need to have the courage to stand up and demand those rights.”
  
Cases
Vitaliy Levchenko and Andrei Melnichenko had been working on a construction site in the southern city of Ladyzhyn without pay for three months. On 20 November 2012 they went to demand their pay from the manager. Security guards called the police who allegedly started beating the workers with batons and later took them to the police stations in handcuffs where the beating and other ill-treatment continued. Andrei’s eardrum was perforated and both of Vitaliy’s arms were broken. Both suffered multiple bruises. They filed a complaint against the police but in February 2013 the case was closed, based on a police explanation that Vitaliy broke his arms banging on a door and Andrei had fallen over. 

On 16 October 2012 Olexander Popov was snatched from the street and pushed into a car by men who told him they were police. They handcuffed him, put a plastic bag over his head and drove him to a forest. There they electrocuted him for several hours, using different voltages, intermittently through his feet and little fingers. After several hours of torture Olexander was taken to Mariupol City police station where detectives interviewed him about the murder of a person they called ‘Akhman’ whom he did not know.  After his release doctors identified and documented bruises caused by at least 12 different blows with a blunt object. Olexander submitted a complaint to the Mariupol Prosecutor’s office accusing the Mariupol police of torture. In March 2013 the investigating prosecutor closed the case on the basis that the police officers’ testimony contradicted the testimony of Olexander. 

On 18 April 2012 Artem Geraymovych-Megalyas was detained in Simferopol, Crimea, for failing to answer a court summons relating to a stolen drill and two mobile phones. In Zheleznodorozhnyi District police station police officers beat him, demanding that he confess to a range of crimes. Artem says one officer tore his nose with a metal hook. Artem lost consciousness and woke up in hospital a week later. The police claimed that a mentally-ill detainee had attacked Artem with a metal pipe and initiated a criminal case against him. Artem remained in hospital until June while medics treated several injuries to his brain, fractures to his skull, and attempted to repair his face. On 1 November he submitted a complaint to the Prosecutor’s office accusing the police of torture. The Prosecutor’s office rejected the complaint for lack of ‘evidence of a crime’. Artem is permanently disfigured and suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress. He is currently in hospital and unable to speak properly. He says that he would be able to identify the police he says tortured him, but has not been given the opportunity to do so. 

See also
No evidence of a Crime: paying the price for police impunity in Ukraine

Public Document 
**************************************** 
For more information please call Amnesty International’s press office in London, UK, on 
+44 20 7413 5566 
email:  press@amnesty.org  twitter: @amnestypress

The April 6 rally in Cherkasy, a city situated 100 miles southeast of Kiev, turned violent after six men took off their jackets to reveal T-shirts emblazoned with the words: “Beat the kikes” and “Svoboda,” the name of a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist movement and the word for “freedom” in Ukrainian.

Police arrested one of the men, who were also confronted by people attending the rally, a gathering of opposition parties.

Police questioned 36 people suspected of inciting ethnic hatred in connection with the incident, according to a report by the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism, a watchdog group.

One of the people injured at the rally, attended by a few hundred people, was Victor Smal, a lawyer and human rights activist.

“I told the men in the T-shirts they were promoting hatred,” Smal told the news site newsru.co.il. “They beat me to the ground and kicked me until I lost consciousness.”

A swastika and neo-Nazi symbols was spray-painted last week on a monument in Mykolaiv, near Odessa, to the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

In Kiev, anti-Semitic flyers on Monday were placed on a synagogue and other Jewish heritage sites, including a monument to the Jewish author Sholom Aleichem and the former home of the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

According to Jewish News, a news website about Ukraine, the posters contained profanities and calls for violence against Jews, who were referred to as “trash.” The posters were signed by Svodoba, the name of a nationalist movement with prominent members who have been accused of anti-Semitism. Svoboda spokesman Ruslan Koshulinsky denied the party was behind the posters.

In Lviv, in western Ukraine, soccer fans last week handed out leaflets ahead of a match between their team, the Carpathians, and a team from Odessa, Chernomorets, whose players are often referred to as “Jews.” The posters were titled “Death to the Jews” and featured a picture of the main entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, according to the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism.

In Poland, “Murder the Jews” was spray-painted on the walls of a newly dedicated Jewish cemetery in Myslenice near Krakow, along with a swastika and the symbol of the elite Nazi SS unit, the news website miasto-info.pl reported.

On March 16, anti-Semitic slogans were chanted at an anti-communist demonstration in Krakow, including “Down with Judaism” and “hit them once with a sickle and twice with the hammer.”

In Hungary, stickers reading “Jews, the university is ours, not yours” were placed on the doors of two University of Budapest lecturers, Gyorgy Peter and Gruberne Welker Agnes. Earlier this month, a young woman wearing a T-shirt with the logo “Auschwitz Holiday Camp” was filmed attending a nationalist demonstration in Budapest.

The gravestones will be transferred to the only remaining Jewish cemetery in the area.

Below is a translation of the letter Meylakh Sheykhet sent to the mayor of Lviv regarding a variety of issues involving Jewish cultural preservation, including the use of headstones as pavement:

Mr. Andriy Sadovy    

Mayor of Lviv

February 18, 2013

Dear Mr. Sadovy:

In response to your letter dated December 13, 2012 we would like to state the following:

On April 23, 2010 the Lviv City Council Executive Committee issued Decision No. 446 wherein it resolved to carry out the International Design Competition for Sites of Jewish History in Lviv in order to “motivate to reconsider and represent the important places in Lviv connected with the history of the Jewish community as part of a multicultural heritage of the city.”

Decision No. 446 is illegal as it involves land issues for the abovementioned places that can be decided upon exclusively by the elected members of the Lviv City Council.

In addition to the Lviv City Council Executive Committee the following organizers of the International Design Competition for Sites of Jewish History in Lviv were announced at a public hearing: Ukrainian-German project entitled Municipal Development and Rehabilitation of the Old City of Lviv jointly executed by the Lviv City Administration and German Society for International Cooperation GTZ (headquartered at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, Bohomoltsya 6 St., Lviv).

Decision No. 446 of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee was adopted in spite of its contents, which stated that the responsibility for the implementation of the competition was assigned to the Executive Committee, but during the public hearing, contrary to this, the responsibility for the competition was assigned to Sofiya Dyak, project coordinator at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe.

As seen from the text of the Decision, the legal basis of the competition was grounded in the municipal regulations of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee, without providing justification for this decision from relevant substantive law of Ukraine and international agreements, including the Agreement with UNESCO for the preservation of Ensemble of the Historic City Centre that had been inscribed in the World Heritage List.

The Lviv City Council Executive Committee breached the competition procedure in several ways:

1. The pre-requisite conditions of the competition were not agreed with the Department of Cultural Heritage of the Lviv Regional State Administration, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in Paris, France and with the Jewish community of Lviv and the world.
2. Contrary to the Decision No. 446 the Lviv City Council Executive Committee removed itself from liability for the competition, delegating the powers to a foreign organization that has not been designated by any authority in the Decision No. 446.
3. The requirements mentioned in points 1.1 … 1.4,2.2 … 2.3, 3.1 … 3.15 of the Decree No. 231/806 dated November 30, 2004 by the State Committee of Ukraine on Building and Architecture at the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine were not kept.
4. The Law of Ukraine on Architectural Activity as well as the Regulation for the Organization of Competitions was not taken into account in the Decision No. 466 of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee.
5. The competition lacks important provisions:

5.1     Restrictions according to the special status of areas inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List.

5.2     Special status of the land of burial sites at the Old Jewish Cemetery (Krakivsky market), places of mass execution by the German Nazis and the territory of the Yanivsky Camp, as recognized by the laws of Ukraine, international agreements between Ukraine and the United States as of March 4, 1994, the Vienna Convention 1969.

At the public hearing, the members of the City Council and Executive Committee, the Ukrainian community leaders, and representatives of the Jewish community of Lviv stated that the international competition and the way it was organized did not comply with the laws of Ukraine and international agreements, the interests of preserving the Jewish heritage in Lviv. It was stated that this competition had become a misrepresentation of historical truth, illegal appropriation of land, illegal granting of land to be used for the trading lots of the Krakivsky market and to build a hotel on Fedorova St. – the land, which belongs to the Lviv community – through unlawful delegation of crucial powers to foreign organizations, namely the German Technical Cooperation GTZ, project for the Municipal Development and Rehabilitation of the Old City of Lviv (Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, Bohomoltsya 6 St., Lviv).

The question of proper preservation of the cultural heritage is regulated not only by the above-mentioned provisions of the substantive law and international agreements, but also by the Protocol of 1996 following a meeting in Lviv, recommendations of USAID and the Government of Ukraine Decree dated December 21, 2010 and the Vienna Convention 1969.

However, despite the need for implementation of the grant of the U.S. Embassy, ​​the Lviv City Council organized a controversial competition, disregarding the existence of the U.S. Ambassador grant for scientific research in this same area of ​​the medieval Jewish district of Lviv on 23-27, 28 Fedorova Street. Thus, the Lviv City Council turned a blind eye to the ongoing international cooperation in the project under the US Ambassador Grant, ​​abandoning substantial assistance to the city of Lviv in the study and restoration of the medieval Jewish Quarter, and ignoring the decision of the Government of Ukraine and the request of UNESCO.

In view of the activities of the German Technical Cooperation GTZ, project for the Municipal Development and Rehabilitation of the Old City of Lviv and Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, at 6 Bohomoltsya St., Lviv – the decision to delegate them the powers of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee has translated into a conflict of interests – a situation that contradicts the Rule of Law in Ukraine and its international agreements.

The Lviv City Council Executive Committee continues to ignore the need to honor the memorial places of the Jewish people in Lviv and the surrounding, tortured by the Holocaust, namely:

1. The Old Jewish Cemetery continues to be used at the behest of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee as a market place – the Krakivsky market – despite the status of this land as a burial site that forbids privatization and misuse of such land. Moreover, the Lviv City Council Executive Committee ignores the Decree of the Central Government dated December 21, 2012 – issued by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine concerning the inscription of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Lviv into the National Register of Monuments of Ukraine as a historical monument of local importance.
2. The Lviv City Council Executive Committee continues to defend in court the illegal construction of the hotel on the Fedorova St. 23-28, ignoring legislation and international agreements of Ukraine, requirements of the World Heritage Centre in Paris, ignoring the unique surviving synagogue building complex Turei Zahav, built during 16^th -18^th century and not facilitating their authentic preservation. The construction of the hotel, if it were to happen, would ruin – with its physical weight, communication requirements and historical architectural disharmony – the historic environment and the remnants of Turei Zahav (Golden Rose) Synagogue.
3. At the Citadel – Concentration Camp Shtalag-328, the site of the Tower of Death, where the German Nazis killed 20 000 Jews, among many other POWs from the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition – now operates a fashionable restaurant and other recreational facilities, disharmonious to this memorial site.
4. Regarding the mass graves in Bilohorshcha, Lysynychi, Vynnyky, Brukhovychi, in Lviv on Pasichna Street – the Lviv City Council Executive Committee did not give any positive response to the documents submitted by our organization.
5. With the acquiescence of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee there is an anti-Semitic “Jewish tavern” called At the Golden Rose and an anti-Ukrainian restaurant Kryivka.

Your references to the untidiness of the territory of the local Jewish history only emphasize the idleness on the part of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee in ensuring proper care for the historic sites (which does not cost so much) because timely and proper cleaning, monitoring respect for the parking ban on the holy memorial site of the Great Synagogue on Arsenalna square and other areas are part and parcel of the public utility services of the city. Actions of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee must clearly meet all the substantive law of Ukraine and international agreements in the field of preservation of historical and cultural heritage.

Hence we request you to:

1. Consider this letter and provide an answer based on the legislation of Ukraine and international agreements, the requirements of UNESCO.

2. Void the Decision No. 446 dated April 23, 2010 of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee.

Yours faithfully,

Meylakh Sheykhet

Director

In ranking the country’s top 10 charitable donors for 2012, the Lviv-based Galytski Kontrakty weekly put 46-year-old businessman Rinat Akhmetov in the top slot for giving the equivalent of $19 million to build an oncology research center. Akhmetov, the son of a coal miner, was estimated by Forbes magazine last year to be worth $16 billion, placing him 39th on its list of richest people and No. 1 in Ukraine.

Second on the list was steel magnate Victor Pinchuk, who gave $11 million to the development of charitable programs in health and education. His $4.2 billion placed him 255th on the Forbes list of richest people.

In third was Alexander Feldman, a Ukrainian lawmaker and president of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, with a donatios of $9.25 million. The magazine said Feldman donated to the protection of children as well as health and educational programs through the Alexander Feldman Fund, which he established. The fund recently helped create a children’s medical center called Feldman-Ecopark and an educational NGO, the Institute of Human Rights and Protection against Extremism and Xenophobia.