Jewish Cemetery Vandalized in Batumi

Unknown perpetrators vandalized a Jewish cemetery outside Batumi in the Adjaran Autonomous Republic last week, Georgian media sources reported.
 
Damage includes a spray painted swastika on a headstone, according to the local weekly newspaper, Batumelebi. The newspaper reported on April 30 that the vandalism was discovered on April 26. A police investigation is ongoing.

“I could never have imagined this would happen here,” Emil Krupnik, head of the Association of Georgian-Jewish Relations in Batumi, said. “Local residents here were also alarmed by this [incident].”

“Nothing similar has ever happened in the past here,” Nodar Jorbenadze, director of the cemetery, told Tbilisi-based Mze TV.

“There has never been anti-Semitism in Georgia. But this fact is alarming and we should not leave this kind of facts without attention and we should not turn a blind eye on this,” Sozar Subari, the Georgian Public Defender, told the Georgian Public Broadcaster on May 1.

He hosted a meeting on May 1 with Jewish community in Georgia to mark a Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“I believe that perpetrators will be held responsible,” Israel’s ambassador in Tbilisi, Shabtai Tsur, said after that meeting.