JEWISH WORLD

By JUDY LASH BALINT O ver a two-day period, begin- ning on Sept. 29, 1941, almost the entire Jewish community of Kyev was wiped out at a ravine on the outskirts of the city known as Babi Yar. The Nazis and their collabora- tors rounded up and shot the 34,000 Jews who had been unable to flee in advance of the Nazi onslaught two weeks earlier, and over the next two years tens of thousands of others, including political dissidents, Roma, psychi- atric patients and Ukrainian na- tionalists faced death by shooting at the once bucolic site now known as Babi Yar in Ukraine. This year, due to restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, the 79th anniversary of the Jewish massacre was marked by an online broadcast featuring Jewish and Israeli leaders and the launch of an audio installation project at the site. B attles over the appropriate way to preserve memory at Holo- caust sites are nothing new; howev- er, efforts to build a memorial and an educational center at the infa- mous Babi Yar have been particu- larly fraught with controversy. This comes despite the fact that according to Dutch Holocaust re- searcher Karel Berkhoff, former chief historian for the non-govern- mental initiative Babyn Yar Holo- caust Memorial Center (BYHMC), “Babyn Yar has come to symbolize what has occasionally been referred to as the ‘Holocaust by bullets’: mass shootings of Jews in Eastern Europe, by contrast with the better known stationary gas chambers used at Auschwitz and other death camps. He notes, “In the ‘eastern’ Holo- caust, the vast majority of Jews were slain in mass shootings, near their homes and within a short span of time — days, weeks or at most months.” During the decades when the area was under Soviet control, there was no mention of the Jewish victims at the huge, Socialist realism-style official statue that hovered over one corner of the vast ravine. All who perished there were described on the plaques as “vic- tims of fascism.” Since the estab- lishment of ind- ependent Ukraine, Jews are acknowl- edged, but attempts to create an appro- priate official mem- memorial that hon- ors and respects all victims and pro- vides a framework to impart the mes- sage of “Never again” have repeat- edly stalled. “There is a reason why every attempt to create a serious memorial at Babi Yar over the last 30 years has failed. There is a strong movement in Ukraine to disconnect Babi Yar entirely from the Holo- caust, to claim that Babi Yar is an internal Ukrainian matter, and that Ukrainians should have the exclu- sive right to decide what a memori- al project at Babi Yar should look like,” Izabella Tabarovsky, manag- ing editor for Russia File and Kennan Focus Ukraine at the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C., explained to JNS . T he latest effort to overcome this attitude had come to life in 2016 with a Declaration of Intent to form the BYHMC, currently head- ed by former Soviet refusenik and human-rights activist Natan Shar- ansky and funded primarily by a consortium of Russian Jewish phi- lanthropists. Recently, the BYHMC launched a sophisticated online presence and held a design competition to build a multimillion-dollar state- of-the-art center planned to be operational by 2026. The Austrian architect firm, querkraft architekten , won the com- petition and has been charged with carrying out the project together with Austrian landscape designer Kieran Fraser. Fraser’s initial plans include a reference to “integration of tomb- stones and memorial plates into the historical area of the Jewish ceme- tery as an essential part of the pro- posed project.” Fraser told JNS that the design is not final, and BYHMC officials say that artistic director Ilya Khrzhanovsky is in charge of the final concept and is “in dia- logue” with the Austrian architects. Building on top of the pre-World War II Jewish and Karaite cemetery that lies immediately adjacent to the site of the 1941 mass killings has been one of the major points of con- tention that have stalled previous attempts at creating a memorial at Babi Yar. But the map attached to the call for submissions to the design competition clearly shows that the cemetery was included. Sharansky, who is chairman of the BYHMC Supervisory Board, assured JNS that under no circum- stances would the center build any- where near the old Jewish cemetery. “We’re not going to dig even 20 to 30 meters away,” he stated. According to Sharansky, the issue of the boundaries of the cemetery and plans for construction are being “monitored by the highest Babi Yar At 79 … And Its Future Ukrainian president honors victims of Babi Yar continued on page 14 “This memorial is our best hope 2.7 million Jews murdered in a Holocaust by bullets at select sites are honored.” 6 JEWISH WORLD • OCTOBER 16-22, 2020 REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK An artist’s rendition of the proposed official memorial to victims in the Holocaust by bullets that occurred at Babi Yar. A 1941 photo of the Babi Yar ravine, down which victims were thrown and systemacially eliminated in a “Holocaust by bullets.” The Nazis and their collaborators shot 34,000 Jews this way.