episodes of the Holocaust. Another 15,000 Jews were murdered in the same place during 1941–1942. After the war, the surviving Jews returned to the city. On September 4–7, 1945 a pogrom took place and around one hundred Jews were beaten, of whom thirty-six were hospitalized and five died of wounds. In 1946, there was only one operating synagogue in Kyiv. The last rabbi to officiate in Kyiv was Rabbi Panets, who retired in 1960 and died in 1968; a new rabbi was not appointed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the Jewish population emigrated from Kyiv. After Ukrainian independence, there was a revival of Jewish community life, with the establishment of two Jewish schools and a memorial in Babi Yar, where an official ceremony is held every year. Today there are approximately 40,000 Jews in Kyiv, with two major religious communities: Chabad (rabbi Jonathan Markovitch); and Karlin. Two major synagogues, the JCC Beit Menachem and the Great Choral Synagogue, serve these communities. Antisemitism Kyiv Rabbi Jonathan Markovitch chose to move his daughter's wedding to Israel, fearing that the guests would be victimized in the chaos during the Ukrainian revolution of 2014. The pro-Russian Ukrainians and the Ukraine-government supporters blamed each other for the exacting situation of the Jews of Kyiv, but the leaders of Ukraine's Jewish community judged that recent anti-Semitic provocations in the Crimea, including graffiti on a synagogue in Crimea's capital that read “Death to the Zhids,” were the handiwork of pro-Russian Ukrainians. Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, who presides over Ukraine's Jewish Federation, signed a letter asking Russia to end its aggression, and compared the current climate in Crimea to that of pre-Anschluss Austria. The memorial Menorah in Babi Yar was desecrated twice with a sprayed swastika, during Rosh Hashana and a couple of months later. During June 2015, there was an explosion in a Jewish-owned shop in Kyiv. An extreme right-wing organization claimed responsibility for the incident. Later that month, the memorial Menorah in Babi Yar was desecrated again. See also Yehupetz References External links Kiev article in the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe Jewish community Kyiv