Ukraine police have found the mutilated body of Chabad-Lubavitch yeshiva student Aryeh Leib Misinzov, who disappeared in Kiev on April 20, the anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, when Neo-Nazis often carry out attacks on Jews.
Lubavitch Rabbi Yaakov Zilberman was called by police to identify the body, according to Chabad.info. “It was a horrific scene,” he said. The body, mutilated into nearly a dozen pieces, was found buried in a Kiev suburb.
Police have arrested the suspected leader of the gang that murdered Misinzov, but they have not announced whether they are treating the killing as an anti-Semitic crime.
The Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Rabbi Moshe Reuven Asman, who was in Israel at the time of the murder, immediately returned to Kiev to refuse police requests that the burial be delayed, in violation of Jewish law. The body is to be flown to Israel for burial.
Anti-Semitism is rampant in the Ukraine, and after Hitler’s birthday, Chabad school principal Rabbi Mordechai Levenarts discovered graffiti, including “Happy Holocaust” and "Death to the Jews,” scrawled on the school’s walls. The same day was the evening of Israel’s Independence Day.
Two and a half years ago, an arsonist torched the school’s entrance.
In a separate incident last month, neo-Nazis damaged a display in Kiev’s Jewish museum.