(JTA) — Earlier this month, Russian-Jewish journalist Alexey Venediktov was fined for speaking in Ukrainian on a radio show — a move many saw as an expression of solidarity with Ukraine during Russia’s ongoing invasion.
Last week, he found a pig’s head on his doorstep and an antisemitic slogan posted on his door.
Vandals wrote the German word “Judensau” on top of a gold trident symbol, a state symbol of Ukraine, on a poster put on the door to Venediktov’s Moscow apartment. The Judensau is a Christian folk image dating back to the Middle Ages that depicts Jews sucking on the teats or peering into the anus of a pig. There are assumed to be about 40 Judensaus in Germany, the oldest from the 13th century, and historians there are split over whether to take them down or leave them up on buildings as educational objects.
On Telegram, Venediktov wrote: “The country that defeated fascism. Why not a Star of David on the door of my apartment?” He added: “They decided to intimidate me and my family.”
Venediktov, whose mother was Jewish and whose father was a Soviet naval officer who died in action in 1955, is the former editor of The Echo of Moscow, one of Russia’s last independent radio stations. It was shut down by Russian authorities on March 1.
Prosecutors claimed it disseminated “deliberately false information regarding the actions of Russian military personnel,” prosecutors had said.
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