Marching on Rostov With Israel’s Chief Rabbi

(lubavitch.com) Five hundred Jews, many wearing armbands with the Star of David, marched on Rostov-on-Don yesterday, August 12, in remembrance of the Zmievskaya Balka massacre. The men, women and youth followed the same route that the Jews of Rostov were forced by the Nazis to march on August 11-12 in 1942 where 27,000 people, among them also Soviet citizens, were murdered at a ravine on the edge of the city. Rostov residents and family members of those murdered mark their loved ones’ deaths at a memorial ceremony here every year. This year, in honor of the 70th memorial, the city’s Jewish community under the leadership of Chabad-Lubavitch of Rostov’s Rabbi Chaim Danzinger organized a march, the first such march in Russia.
In an unusual display of Jewish identity for local Jews, many sporting yarmulkes, the group walked proudly through Rostov, where traffic was diverted and a police escort accompanied the marchers.