Jewish graves desecrated by Russian Nazis

Dozens of Jewish graves have been desecrated in St Petersburg in the city’s second xenophobic attack in a week, a Jewish community leader said on Monday, accusing authorities of negligence.

The Administrative Director of St Petersburg’s Jewish Association, Yefim Babushkin, said up to 40 graves had been daubed with Nazi swastikas on Saturday night. Police said an investigation had been launched into the attack on a city cemetery, but officials refused to speculate on who might be responsible. St Petersburg has a bad record of xenophobic attacks.

Last week, a nine-year-old girl from ex-Soviet Tajikistan in Central Asia was beaten to death in a city courtyard by a group of teenagers, blamed by the media on skinheads. In September, police arrested four skinheads suspected of killing a six-year-old girl from Tajikistan. A year earlier, about 30 skinheads beat to death a trader from ex-Soviet Azerbaijan. Attacks against Jews are not unusual in Russia where anti-Semitism was rampant in Tsarist times.