MOSCOW (JTA) — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited the Babi Yar memorial during a trip to the Ukraine.
“I wanted to visit Babi Yar to express my solidarity with the victims of anti-Semitism and intolerance, and as a sign of my resolve to do everything in my power to fight the hatred and evil that so disfigure our world,” Annan said Monday. He also said attacks on synagogues in Europe in recent months “should trouble people everywhere who are concerned about human rights and human dignity.”
On Sept. 29-30, 1941, more than 33,000 Jews were killed by German forces and local collaborators, and their bodies were thrown into the open ravine at Babi Yar. Until the end of World War II, Babi Yar served as a site for twice-weekly killings. Up to 100,000 people, both Jews and non-Jews, were killed there.
Palestinian leader charged with assault
TORONTO (JTA) — Police charged a Palestinian leader in Canada with assault two months after a prominent doctor was injured at a protest.
Dr. Bernard Goldman, a 66-year-old heart surgeon and recipient of the Order of Canada, stepped out of a downtown bookstore into the March 30 pro-Palestinian protest near the Israeli Consulate in Toronto. When he said, “Stop the suicide bombings” to one of the protesters, he was shoved to the ground and his shoulder was dislocated and broken.
Murad Awin Ebeid, 37, surrendered to police in May. He is scheduled to appear in court July 11.
Daniel Pearl’s widow gives birth to a son
PARIS (JTA) — Mariane Pearl, the widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, gave birth to a son she named Adam on May 28 in Paris.
Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered while on assignment in Pakistan. He was abducted in January, and a video showing his brutal murder — after he was forced to say, “I am a Jew” — surfaced a month later.