World Jewry’s concerns have been heightened with word of a firebomb attack on a synagogue southeast of the capital of Kiev Sunday night.

According to Lubavitch.com, the Giymat Rosa Synagogue in Zaporizhia (pictured) was opened in 2012 on the site where the Nazis ordered the Jewish population to report before their deportation and murder during the Holocaust.

“Like millions of concerned people around the world, we hope that the emerging leadership in Ukraine will steer a course based on democratic values and inclusion, including guaranteeing rights and safety for its large Jewish communities and their communal institutions,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

“As the late Simon Wiesenthal said, ‘Where democracy is strong, it is good for Jews and where it is weak, it is bad for Jews’.” Nothing will better guarantee a future for Ukrainian Jewry than the end of violent confrontations and the restoration of true democratic rule,” he added.

SWC