World news-roundup: 40,000 expected to attend Ukraine pilgrimage

Country: Ukraine

Ahead of Rosh Hashanah, Chasidic leaders have urged 40,000 Jewish pilgrims heading to the Ukrainian city of Uman not to buy from women, in order to ‘preserve modesty’. The annual Orthodox pilgrimage sees Jews visit the final resting place of the Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, a revered 18th-century luminary.

Country: Lithuania

A battalion of Special Forces soldiers from the Lithuanian military has been deployed to the site of former concentration camp where 5,000 Jews were buried. The grounds of the privatised Seventh Fort in Kaunas are also used for summer camps and private events. The elite unit is training to repel a Russian invasion.

Country: Russia

Researchers have found the grave of an influential Jewish writer and resistance fighter at a former Siberian camp for political prisoners. Pinchus Kahanovich, an anti-fascist fighter, was one of the last century’s most influential writers in Yiddish. His grave was found near the coal-mining village of Vortuka.

Country: Germany

Prosecutors are dropping the case against a former Auschwitz medic with dementia, after he was found unfit to stand trial. Wheelchair-bound Hubert Zafke, 96, is charged with being an accomplice to the murders of 3,681 people. His unit placed the Zyklon-B pesticide crystals into the gas chambers.