You're reading: Zahoor buys Kinopanorama but finds that Jewish group has other plans for building

Foreign investor finds himself in a dispute over property whose initial privatization is challenged in court.

The Kinopanorama building in the center of Kyiv has had a few different uses since its construction in 1899. Some say Jewish sugar magnate Lev Brodsky built the brick landmark on 19 Shota Rustaveli as a private mansion. Others say it became a Jewish synagogue. It stood as a movie theater from 1957 until the last film was shown earlier this year.

Historians say the building’s last religious use came in 1933, when Josef Stalin was terrorizing the Soviet Union with mass murders, purges and famines. Some 76 years later, however, the distant religious history forms the modern-day basis of a Jewish group’s claim to the property today.

The group has challenged the municipal government’s privatization of the building in 2008. Any use of the building is on hold as the case is litigated in court. An Oct. 24 hearing has been set in Kyiv Economic Court.

The legal challenge surprised ISTIL Group owner Mohammad Zahoor, who bought the property for more than $7 million two months ago.

Now Zahoor’s plans for the property are in limbo by what he describes as a frivolous challenge.

He says much more is at stake than just his ISTIL Group’s investment. If his ownership is successfully challenged, Zahoor said, no property owner’s legal rights are safe in Ukraine.

“We are well-established investors here, so when we are investing, everyone looks at us and thinks that this country is safe to do business,” Zahoor said. “So if the deal is reversed, it means that investors will lose interest totally in Ukraine. It would mean that nobody can safeguard their properties in this country.”

Zahoor, 54, is a British citizen who also owns and publishes the Kyiv Post. In keeping with the publisher’s policy of safeguarding the newspaper’s history of independent journalism, neither he nor anyone at the ISTIL Group reviewed this article prior to its publication.

Zahoor bought the property from the developers of Mandarin Plaza, an upscale shopping mall in Kyiv. The Mandarin Plaza developers, in turn, acquired it from Kinopanorama theater employees, who took ownership from the Kyiv municipal government. This three-transaction chain took place in the last 20 months.

“We didn’t buy a synagogue,” said Dmytro Arotskiy, supervisory council member of the Mandarin Plaza. “We bought a cinema, which was built in its place in 1957. A prayer house was located there ages ago. If we go by their [opponent’s] logic, then let’s demolish hotel Salut, for example, because there used to be a Christian cathedral [Nikolsky Army Cathedral] once upon a time.”

The Jewish Religious Community, which claims a following of 25,000 out of Kyiv’s estimated 80,000 Jews, begs to differ. Its representatives say the city should have never privatized the 1,700-square meter structure because it lawfully and rightfully belongs to the Jewish community.

The community worships at Choral synagogue on the same street as the disputed property.

According to David Milman, an aide to Choral synagogue Rabbi Moshe Asman, Ukrainian law dictates that all iconic religious structures in state possession should be transferred to religious communities free of charge.

However, Milman said the Jewish Religious Community is willing to compromise and would settle for another house across the street. “We don’t want to leave scorched earth as a result of our actions,” he said.

Milman said that the Jewish community has been pressing authorities for a decade to have the site returned for religious use. Until now, their arguments have fallen on deaf ears. After the Jewish group challenged the privatization, the Kyiv High Economic Court in September seized the theater until the competing arguments play out in court.

Some historians don’t think the building at that address was ever a synagogue. Others say one of its rooms may have been set aside for prayer. Amid the disputed history, the building is last mentioned as a religious sanctuary in 1933, when Soviet authorities converted it into a gym and then a printing house.

During World War II, the property was irreparably damaged, according to city records. But Milman disputes that the building was ruined. Destroyed or not, the Kinopanorama theater was up and running by 1957.

If accounts of the building’s destruction are accurate, then claims for its return to the Jewish community appear even weaker. In 2005, President Victor Yushchenko appealed to then-Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko for return of the Kinopanarama building to the Jewish community, citing its history as a synagogue known as “the merchants’.”

In response, Omelchenko said that the building retained only one original wall and was not on the city’s heritage list. Therefore, the mayor argued that the building did not qualify for restitution.

In the same letter, Omelchenko noted that the city had given four houses to the Jewish community, including the Choral synagogue in use today.

Kyiv historian Vitaliy Kovalynsky, who works for the Kyiv History Museum, said Ukraine should only return iconic buildings if they still exist and if there is a proven need for them in the community. By those standards, Kovalynsky said religious claims to the Kinopanorama are spurious.

“It’s historical speculation. The Choral synagogue is enough to fulfill their needs. If they don’t have enough space, they should go to other synagogues or build a new one. But no, they want to stay in the center,” Kovalynsky said.

Kovalynsky thinks that if the Jewish Religious Community plaintiffs prevail in its lawsuit, others may use the precedent to abuse the system. “It’s absurd. We don’t have a law about restitution and it’s not an iconic building because it’s no longer there,” Kovalynsky said.

The cinema’s director, Natalya Sokolova, is still working at the Kinopanorama in anticipation that films will one day again be shown on the big screen. Sokolova said that synagogue leaders have failed to provide documents to support their claim. She also questioned whether the Jewish Religious Community intends to restore a synagogue there.

The Jewish community, meanwhile, does not have a monolithic view on the dispute.

Yevhen Chervonenko, a deputy to Kyiv’s mayor and vice president of Ukraine’s Jewish Congress, said the time has long since passed for religious claims to be made on the private parcel.

“The community needs [this synagogue]. It’s the largest community. But I don’t see any way out right now,” Chervonenko said. “The reality is that there are ownership rights and these questions should be treated with great respect.”

And that’s precisely the current owner’s position.

“Legally they cannot take away the building,” Zahoor said. “They are only trying to get something instead of it by extortion methods so common in this country. Even the rabbi [Asman] who is supposed to be preaching peace, he is using the same methods as bandits and other mafia people are using.”