70 years of sorrow

On September 29th, 1941, about 8 a.m. Jews who lived in Kyiv gathered on the corner of Melnykova and Dehtiarivska streets. They brought money, documents, valuable things and warm clothes with them, everything that they were demanded to have according to numerous announcements spread around the city. Anyone who doesn’t satisfy the requirements and doesn’t show up will be shot, they said. Until the very last moment people believed that they are to be taken out of town but instead they were taken to Babyn Yar and shot.

This year Ukraine and the rest of the world remember the 70th anniversary of the terrible tragedy. Remembrance of the Holocaust is strongly embedded in mentality of many generations of Kyivites. And nowadays, when there are many talks about intolerance and discrimination by nationality, race, and religion again, it is utterly important to reinterpret and discuss the Babyn Yar tragedy. Memory of persecutions and mass annihilation of Jewish by nazi Germany during the WWII is an important base for building a modern tolerant society. It is important that Ukrainian youth comprehends this tragedy as their own and not somebody else’s and is able to draw correct conclusions.

Today Babyn Yar tragedy requires a new, fresh, and broader reinterpretation on scientific, cultural and social levels, think the organizers of a conference “There is no future without memory. Seventy years after mass shootings in Babyn Yar,” which took place on September 27 in Teacher’s House in Kyiv. It was organized by the international association “Community of Sant’Egidio” and Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Ukraine, with support from Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine.

The tragedy, its role in the context of human values, the present-day problem of intolerance in the whole world and in Ukraine in particular, about lessons learned from Babyn Yar that would help to develop a tolerant society was discussed by authoritative experts and researchers. Among them were such prominent figures as Yaakov Dov Bleich, main rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine, Myroslav Popovych, director of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Hryhorii Skovoroda Pilosophy Institute, Andrii Podolsky, director of Ukrainian Holocaust History Research Center, Borys Zabarko, head of Ukrainian Association of Former Jewish Prisoners of concentration camps and ghetto, Adriano Roccucci, Roma Tre University professor, and others.

On September 27 a combined Ukraine-Russia documental exhibition dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Babyn Yar opened in the Central State Literature and Art Archive Museum of Ukraine. It presents about 200 unique and obscure photographs and documents that cover tragic events of German occupation of Kyiv in 1941-43. Orders of occupation authorities towards citizens, lists of shot citizens, transcripts of interrogation of witnesses, extracts Babyn Yar tragedy from Kyivans’ diaries, partisans’ information about torturing of civilians, documents about mass shootings, rare photogpaphs, etc.

Also today, when we mark the anniversary of the tragedy, a requiem and the laying of flowers will take place in National Historical Memorial Complex “Babyn Yar.” The service, in which hierarchs of Ukrainian churches, representatives of NGOs, family and friends of victims will participate, will start at 12.