Halychyna’s Babyn Yar

For ten years now representatives of a number of the Lviv-based volunteer organizations, national associations, and religious confessions have been crusading for a memorial to honor the victims of the former Yaniv Concentration Camp, albeit without much success, as neither the powers that be nor local party branches seem to have this issue high on their agenda. It will be recalled that the Yaniv camp was one of the ghastliest on occupied Ukrainian territory. In 1941-1943, some 200,000 inmates, mostly Jews, as well as Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, French, and people of other nationalities were put to death there. According to some estimates, every third Jew who resided in Lviv before 1939 perished in the Yaniv death camp. For this very reason Yaniv is often referred to as Halychyna’s Babyn Yar.

Thus far, the Lviv authorities do not seem to understand that honoring the innocent victims of the Yaniv Concentration Camp is not only a question of morality, but also a matter of big-time politics. Next year an international forum, A Challenge to Holocaust and its Tragedy, will be held in Lviv sponsored by the Dr. Alexander Schwarz Holocaust International Center. As part of the forum, state and public figures are to meet with former concentration camp inmates and the righteous gentiles from Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Austria, Israel, and elsewhere. It stands to reason that forum participants will look for a place to honor the victims of the former Yaniv Concentration Camp. Regrettably, there is only a humble memorial stone in the place where sixty years before the infamous death camp opened its gates.