Anti-Semitic leaflets in Kaliningrad

In Kaliningrad, on September 5, 2004, a newspaper was distributed without any imprint entitled “Bulletin of Russian Autonomy.”

On the pages of the publication , “Russian patriot, chairman of Russian autonomy V. Levchenko” claimed that a “Jewish government” had been formed in the Kaliningrad region, and Governor Vladimir Egorov had close relatives with the surname Gershtein in his family tree.

The newspaper published an open letter to the deputy presidential envoy to the Northwestern Federal District Andrei Stepanov, the prosecutor of the Kaliningrad region Vyacheslav Chulkov and the head of the regional police department Sergei Kirichenko with a request to “take immediate measures.”

The prosecutor's office of the Kaliningrad region opened a criminal case under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

This is not the first such action in Kaliningrad. For example, similar actions took place in August when, in August 2004, a calendar with images of Kaliningrad politicians was thrown into the city’s mailboxes with the inscription: “Thank God that I was not born a goyim.”

In the spring of 2003, 14 Kaliningrad politicians received anti-Semitic letters from the so-called Orthodox Military Brotherhood with threats of physical destruction.

Moscow Bureau for Human Rights

Sources

• A case has been opened in Kaliningrad for inciting national hatred // Rosbalt. 2004. September 15