Babi Yar

This week, the German-based Jüdisches Forum für Demokratie und gegen Antisemitismus published an article on the Babi Yar Memorial in Kiev, where, in September 1941, over 33,000 Jews were murdered over a two-day period during the Nazi occupation. This week, the memorial was hit by a Russian missile. The article is translated by Fousesquawk.

Jüdhttps://www.jfda.de/post/raketen-auf-babyn-jar

Missiles on Babi Yar

“No monument stands over Babi Yar,” begins Yevgeni Yevuschenko’s poem about the anti-Semitic National Socialist massacre in the Ukrainian ravine, Babi Yar, in September 1941. Yesterday, the Babi Yar memorial site in Kiev was attacked by Putin’s missiles.

Babi Yar and the Holocaust hardly play a role in the official memory culture of the Soviet Union.  When Jewish victims are thought of, it is as fallen Soviets, not as Jewesses/Jews. Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union was widespread.

Putin’s goal is the destruction of Ukraine and its history. That a central Holocaust memorial site is hit by his missiles doesn’t matter. The Jewish victims of Babi Yar don’t matter to him, (and) don’t merit consideration. 

The Office of the Ukrainian President declared that the almost 34,000 victims of Babi Yar were newly murdered by the attack-a powerful description. Again, it is shown that Putin’s “Denazification” is only a disrespectful and empty history-revisionist phrase.

On Twitter, the Jewish-Ukrainian President Zelensky wrote (in English): “To the world, What is the point of saying, ‘Never again’ for 80 years if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same Babi Yar site?”

Nathan Sharansky, Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the memorial, declared in a written statement: “At the Babi Yar Memorial Center, in which Europe’s largest mass grave of the Holocaust is built, we are working to restore historical truth to the historical memory after decades of Soviet suppression so that the evil of the past can never be repeated. We cannot permit that the truth-once again-becomes the victim of a war.

We can only agree with this statement. Link to the statement:

https://babynyar.org/en/news/496/rosiiski-viiska-nanesly-udar-po-memorialu-holokostu-u-babynomu-yaru

Last year, on the occasion of its 80th anniversary, we wrote a text about the Babi Yar massacre.

https://www.jfda.de/post/im-gedenken-an-die-opfer-des-nationalsozialistischen-antisemitischen-massenmords-von-babyn-jar-1941