Mila Kunis Targeted In Anti-Semitic Slur By Ukrainian Politician In Facebook Rant
A Ukrainian politician used an anti-Semitic slur in a Facebook rant targeted at actress Mila Kunis, prompting members of the Jewish community to lobby for an apology from Kunis' home country on Thursday.
The Facebook message was posted by Igor Miroshnichenko, who wrote Kunis - a Jew who was born in the Ukraine - is not a true Ukrainian because she is a "zhydovka," which is a word used as a slur against Jews since the Holocaust.
The Ukrainian Justice Ministry said Miroshnichenko did nothing wrong because the word is included in a Ukrainian academic dictionary as an archaic term for Jew and is not considered a slur. The Ministry ruled that the use of the word "zhyd" and its feminine derivative "zyhdovka" to describe a Jew is legal.
However, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in L.A. wrote a letter on Thursday, obtained by TMZ, to the Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov explaining its "outrage and indignation against the slanders of the Svoboda Party directed against the Jewish community in the Ukraine."
The letter, which translated "zyhdovka as "dirty Jewess," addressed Miroshnichenko's comment and said the term was used as an "insidious slur invoked by the Nazis and their collaborators as they rounded up the Jews to murder them at Babi Yar and in the death camps."
"Mila Kunis' family...left the Ukraine in the first place because of anti-Semitism. Today, she is a respected American actress, who is now owed an apology by the Ukraine," the letter said. "It is a tragedy that even after the Holocaust and the demise of the Soviet Union such hatred and anti-Semitism is still a force in the mainstream of your country."
The Center ended its letter by calling on the prime minister to "publically condemn this attack and to take measures to defeat the xenophobic forces that threaten your democracy."
