Holdomor — Genocide, Holocaust: an evcerlasting warning for mankind
On Sept. 27 the National Opera hosted the Zbory Pamiati memorial meeting as part of the project Zhyttia Narodovi Moiemu (Life for My People) commemortaing the 65th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy. The Day’s journalists took a special interest in the speech of the noted Ukrainian scholar, public and cultural figure, Academician Ivan M. Dziuba. Below is the text (courtesy of the author) which we are publishing not only out of profound respect for Mr. Dziuba, but also because we believe that this brief presentation places the emphases very accurately and wisely that allow to preserve justice and objective in disucssing Babyn Yar as a world catastrophe.
Indeed, does any attempt to treat genocidal crimes (like the Holocaust or Holodomor of 1932-33) through the prism of only the national idea, however noble, correspond to the ethical level, challenges and realiities of the 21st century?
Is it worth using any scales to determine what nation has suffered the worst from hair-raiging atrocities of tolitarianism in the mid-20th century; how many victims, heroes, stoolies or criminals were there within a given nation (Ukrainian, Jewish or others)? Regrettably, we thought that the Israeli president’s speech was not totally free from obsolete approaches. This was obvious especially in view of the fact that the president of Ukraine and his secretariat responsible for the event did a really good job.
Memories are impossible without conscience and Babyn Yar is an everlasting warning for mankind. Academician Ivan Dziuba is convinced of this. Before giving him the floor, let us remind ourselves of what the great Polish poet Julian Tuwim wrote: “Mankind is united not so much by the blood that runs in our veins as by the blood that runs out of them after gunshots.”
Dark misnthropic forces for some reason choose scenic places for their atricities, perhaps owing to the instinctive desire to desecrate the very spirit of life. It was thus Babyn Yar, a beautiful ravine in a Kyiv suburb was chosen by the Bolsheviks to secretly bury there victims of the Holodomor in 1933. Eight years later the Nazis chose Babyn Yar for a horrible demonstration of their methods of “final solution to the Jewish problem,” in other words physicial destruction of the Jews as a nation, and at the same time reprisals against their political enemies and dissenters of all nationalities, including Ukrainians, particularly our prominent poetess Olena Teliha.
For the past 65 years the memory about tens of thousands of innocent victims has been crying out to the conscience of mankind. The symbol of Babyn Yar had to act as a lasting warning to mankind, against the many-sided misanthropic and despotic forces. Little was done along these lines in the Soviet Union because Stalin was already considering his own version of the “final solution” and during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period semiofficial and “shy” anti-Semtism began to gradually gain momentum.
The intelligentsia in opposition to the regime had to relate the truth about Babyn Yar. It was voiced by Kyivans Anatoly Kuznetsov, Viktor Nekrasov, Naum Korzhavin, and Borys Antonenko-Davydovych. Yevgeni Yevtushenko’s voice resounded all over the world. A spontaneous rally of thousands of residents at Babyn Yar on Sept. 29, 1966, comemmorating the 25 th anniversary of the tragedy, was an exciting and powerful act of protest against the cynicism of the regime, contrary to all interdictions. It is hard to describe what took place on that day. The surronding hills were crowded with excited people and the places was dominated an atnopshere of mourning and alarm. People wanted to know the truth about the tragedy and to believe it would never happen again.
Ladies and gentelement, addressing you today, I could repeat every word of what I said at the time. Unfortunately, even though the world seems to know the truth about genocide and seems to realize the need to duly honor the memory of its victims, depite the existence of proper rituals, can we say that mankind has learned its lessons from these and other tragedies of the 20 th century, from history? No, it has not, because even now we are witnes to outbursts of misanthropism on all continents; blood is beig shed owing to racial, national, and religious prejudices.
Forty years ago we said that the Ukrainians and Jews must show mankind an example of understanding and mutual support. Such an example was shown by Ukrainian and Jewish dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s who jointly opposed despotism, suffered as prisoners of conscience in Brezhnev’s priosn camps; those who survived preserved this friendship and remained faithful to the ideal of humaneness. Are all of us Ukrainians worthy of the memory of Vasyl Stus and Ivan Svitlychny? Even now we are ashamed to realize that some among us Ukrainians are cultivating what they call patriotism on an anti-Semtic basis; they do not understand how badly they are damaging the Ukrainian cause and how they are distorting their own human essence Some say that since the Jews constitute a powerful force in the modern world, they have to be reckoned with. No, one mut reckon with once conscience and a sense of humaneness. Likewise there is another question: Are all the Jews capable what the great Jewish leader Vladimir Zhabotinski had to say in defense of Ukraine? Are all of them prepared to sign their names under the words of the prominent Russian author, the Ukrainian Jew Vassili Grossman who almost half a century ago in his story Vse techet (Everything Flows) idientified the Holodomor with the Nazi genocide, the death of starvation of a Ukrainian child “in a vast steppe” with that of Jewish child in a Nazi concentration camp? Can all of us oppose Ukrainophobia and attempts to present Ukraine as a hotbed of anti-Semitism, contrary to historical and modern facts?
By the will of history the destinies of the Ukrainian and Jewish people are interconnected and they must adequately respond this challenge of history. They must show mankind an example of mutural respect, understanding, and assistance. This would our joint and noble contribution to world history.
