Public menorah torn down in Moldova

Thursday, December 17, 2009 | by

Some 200 fundamentalist Orthodox Christians in Moldova took down a public Chanukah menorah and planted a wooden cross in its place.

News footage showed a bearded priest leading the group in chanting anti-Semitic slogans during the Dec. 13 incident. The menorah had been installed

by the Jewish community

in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, a former Soviet state.

“The Jews can try to kill us, to traumatize our children,” but Moldovan Orthodox believers will resist, the priest said over a P.A. Moldova, he said, was an Orthodox country, and the Jewish people are trying to “dominate people.” — jta