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Babi Yar, a ravine nearKyiv, was the scene of possibly the largest shooting massacre during theHolocaust. After the war, commemoration efforts encountered serious difficulty because of the policy of theSoviet Union. After thedissolution of the Soviet Union, a number of memorials were erected. The creation of theBabyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center was initiated in 2016.
Soviet leadership did not identify Jewishness as a particular category of the victims of the Babi Yar tragedy; instead, it presented the atrocities as 'murder of peacefulSoviet people' and included the Jews among the wider Soviet populace.[1] The first draft report of the Extraordinary State Commission (Чрезвычайная Государственная Комиссия), dated December 25, 1943 was officiallycensored in February 1944 as follows:[2]
| Draft version | Published version |
|---|---|
| "The Hitlerist bandits committed mass murder of the Jewish population. They announced that on September 29, 1941, all the Jews were required to arrive to the corner of Melnykova and Dorohozhytska streets and bring their documents, money and valuables. The butchers marched them to Babi Yar, took away their belongings, then shot them." | "The Hitlerist bandits brought thousands of civilians to the corner of Melnykova and Dorohozhytska streets. The butchers marched them to Babi Yar, took away their belongings, then shot them." |
The Soviets accurately reported the total number of Babi Yar dead, but they did not identify their ethnicity until decades later. Even then, they did not accurately represent the number ofRoma who were murdered.[3]
After the war, several attempts were made to erect a memorial at Babi Yar to commemorate the fate of the Jewish victims. A turning point wasYevgeny Yevtushenko's 1961 poem on Babi Yar, which begins "Nad Babim Yarom pamyatnikov nyet" ("There are no monuments for Babi Yar");[4] it is also the subject of each of the five movements of Shostakovich'sSymphony No. 13.
An official memorial for Soviet citizens shot at Babi Yar was erected in 1976.[5]
After thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukrainian government allowed the establishment of a separate memorial specifically identifying the Jewish victims. The creation of theBabyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center was initiated in 2016.
The monuments to commemorate the numerous events associated with Babi Yar tragedy include:
On the night of 16 July 2006, the memorial dedicated to the Jewish victims was vandalized. Several gravestones, the foundation of the commemorative sledge-stone, and several steps leading to the Menorah memorial were damaged.[9][10] TheMinistry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine issued a statement condemning the act of vandalism.[11]
On 1 March 2022, the complex which includes both the memorial and the cemetery for victims the Babi Yar massacre was hit by a missile attack carried out by theRussian Federation during the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[12]
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A small triangular section of land inBrighton Beach,Brooklyn,New York City (a neighborhood with a large Jewish and Russian population), was named Babi Yar Triangle in 1981, and renovated in 1988.[13]
Alan G. Gass, FAIA, President of the Babi Yar Park Foundation that originally developed the Park with the City and County of Denver, stated:
We built a public memorial park to the Babi Yar massacre in Denver, Colorado. It was dedicated in 1983, with an inscribed black granite entrance gateway, a "People Place" amphitheatre, a "Forest that Remembers" with a single fountain jet flowing from the middle of a flat, black granite monolith in the center of the grove, and a high-walled, narrow black bridge over a ravine, all at three points of a Magen David carved out of the native prairie grasses. It is owned and maintained by the City & County of Denver. The park is used by the recently arrived immigrants from Russia and the former Soviet Union as a place of memory during the year, with a remembrance ceremony in September each year.[14]
There is a memorial to the victims of Babi Yar at theNahalat Yitzhak Cemetery inGiv'atayim. The memorial was erected over bone fragments from Babi Yar that were re-interred at the cemetery. The bones were taken from Ukraine by three American college students in July 1971. The memorial was dedicated in 1972 by the Prime Minister of Israel,Golda Meir. There is an annual ceremony onYom HaShoah, the Holocaust Day.[14]
A memorial to the victims of the Babi Yar Massacre was erected in theSydney suburb ofBondi on 28 September 2014, which has a large Russian-speaking Jewish community. The monument was unveiled by the Mayor of Waverley and the Federal Member,Malcolm Turnbull. The erection of the monument was an initiative of theExecutive Council of Australian Jewry and its Public Affairs Director,Alexander Ryvchin, who was born in the city of Kyiv, where the massacre took place.[15] The English portion of the inscription on the monument reads:
"In memory of the Jews of Kiev, massacred at Babi Yar by the Nazis and their Ukrainian Collaborators, and in recognition of the suffering of Soviet Jewry."[15]
The massacres at Babi Yar have been the subject of many artistic works. A number of films, documentaries, novels, poems, musical compositions, and television productions have commemorated the tragedy of murder and loss.
In his 1961 book,Star in Eclipse: Russian Jewry Revisited,Joseph Schechtman provided an account of the Babi Yar tragedy.
Apoem was written by the Russian poetYevgeny Yevtushenko; this in turn was set to music for full orchestra by world famous composerDmitri Shostakovich in hisSymphony No. 13 in 1962.
Anatoly Kuznetsov began writing a memoir of his wartime life when he was 14. Over the years he continued working on it, adding documents and eyewitness testimony. In 1966, Kuznetsov'sBabi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel was published incensored form in the Soviet monthly literary magazineYunost. He managed to smuggle 35 mmphotographic film containing the uncensored manuscript with him when he defected from the USSR, and the book was published in the West in 1970.
D. M. Thomas's 1981 novel,The White Hotel uses the massacre's anonymity and violence as a counterpoint to the intimate and complex nature of the human psyche.
In 1985, a documentary filmBabiy Yar: Lessons of History byVitaly Korotich was made to mark the tragedy.
Anoratorio was composed by the Ukrainian composerYevhen Stankovych to the text ofDmytro Pavlychko (2006).
In 2021, Belarusian and Ukrainian filmmakerSergei Loznitsa released the documentary,Babi Yar. Context. The film explores the prelude and aftermath of the massacre using footage shot by German and Soviet troops, and was reviewed favorably byThe New York Times.[16]
