Ukraine to hold state event for 80th anniversary of Babyn Yar Massacre

On the 29th and 30th of September 1942, 33,771 Jewish people were shot and killed by the Nazis at Babyn Yar. Throughout the remainder of the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation of Kyiv, tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Roma, and mentally ill people were murdered at the same location.

Babyn Yar is Europe's largest mass grave; an estimated 100,000 people were shot and left to die there by the Nazis. 

Global and Jewish leaders, Holocaust survivors and Ukrainian Righteous Among the Nations, as well as Holocaust researchers and educators, will participate in the event which will will take place on October 6th, 2021.

The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre also announced earlier this year that they are developing a museum complex which will encompass dozens buildings, one of them a symbolic synagogue which has already been completed.

Two additional memorial structures will be unveiled by the Memorial Center ahead of the October 6th state commemorations.

The first, the "Crystal Wall of Crying," will be one of the biggest art installations constructed in Europe throughout the last decade. Once complete, it will be 40 meters long and 3 meters high. A total of 75 quartz crystals will be used, and the memorial will accommodate 25 people. The installation was designed by conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović.

 

The second, "Kurgan of Memory" will be the first museum building on the site and will tell the story of Babyn Yar through 3D modelling. The architecture will take the shape of a kurgan, a type of tumulus or burial mound raised over a final resting ground, significant to the history of Ukraine. For the 80th anniversary event visitors will be encouraged to ceremonially leave a visiting stone on top of the roof of the pavilion.

Commenting on the decision to hold an official state memorial, Natan Sharanksy, human rights activist and chair of the supervisory board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, said “growing up in post-World War II Ukraine, meant growing up in ignorance. My childhood was spent next to killing fields like Babyn Yar and yet I knew nothing, as the mass murders which the Nazis had perpetrated were deliberately silenced by the Soviet authorities.

"Babyn Yar is the symbol of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe and a past which has been forgotten for too long. The 80th anniversary of this dreadful massacre is the ideal opportunity to right an historic wrong, for the sake of Ukraine, the Jewish People and indeed the world. It is a chance to tell the stories of those who were murdered, to honor their memories and to learn the lessons of this terrible tragedy.”