Remembering Babyn Yar

One always seems to feel something uncomfortable emanating from Babyn Yar, something left over from the unspeakable evil still hanging over it. There are apartments in the Podil, Kyiv's historic Jewish neighborhood, which one cannot enter without one's temperature rising. I recall one old woman telling me how the Jews marched out of that district to their deaths in the ravine called Babyn Yar. “One woman was carrying a baby,” she said. “Give him to me. I'll raise him as a Jew!”

“No,” the young woman replied. “He will die with his people.” And she walked on. Such things happened.

Estimates have it that half of Ukraine's remaining Jews have emigrated either to Israel, Germany, or the United States. Like others here, they simply see no prospects for things improving. At the same time there are those who are actively working to revive Kyiv's and Ukraine's once vibrant Jewish culture. Rabbi Bleich, Ukraine's Orthodox Chief Rabbi, came here some years ago from Brooklyn to set up a Jewish Cultural Center and synagogue in the Podil. One cannot but wish them well. This city and nation will never again be whole without rebuilding at least what can be rebuilt of the culture of Sholom Aleichem any more than it can without rebuilding the Ukrainians' own wounded culture. Neither will be an easy task, but one doffs one's hat to those who are doing it.