I read with horror and profound sadness the reports that the criminal Russian missile and aerial attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the damage inflicted on the Babyn Yar memorial to victims of the Holocaust. It was in a large ravine located there that over the course of two days in early September 1941 members of a Nazi German Einsatzgruppe murdered almost 34,000 Ukrainian Jewish men, women, and children. The Nazi authorities continued to perpetrate horrendous crimes at Babyn Yar, using it as a mass grave to dispose of up to 100,000 bodies of Jews, Roma, Ukrainian civilians and Soviet prisoners of war, until Kyiv was liberated by the Soviets Red Army in 1943, but not before the retreating Germans bulldozed the ravine and burned the bodies to erase the evidence of their horrific crimes. Since the war Babyn Yar has become one of the most important memorial sites of the Holocaust and holds a special place in the hearts of Ukraine, a country with a large Jewish population (perhaps as many as 360,000), and a Jewish president. President Volodymyr Zelensky has long pledged to preserve his country’s Holocaust sites, to remember the victims, and to secure the historical truth of what happened during that dark chapter of the country’s history.
The entire civilized world condemns these horrible and senseless attacks ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin on the pretext that he would rid Ukraine of its “neo-Nazi” leaders with the expressed goal, the "denazification" of the country. Critics of Putin have condemned Putin’s delusional distortion and manipulation of the Holocaust to justify his criminal invasion of a sovereign and democratic country. Strange then he would attack and damage one of the most important memorials to Nazi crimes in Ukraine. Thankfully we now know that the iconic memorials in memorial park – a large menorah, a newly built synagogue, and a monument honoring Soviet citizens and prisoners of war who were murdered at the site, have not been damaged although a museum build was partially burned, and other damage occurred across the 140-acre memorial. President Zelensky perhaps summed up best the attack that was “beyond humanity.” "What is the point of saying 'never again' for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating . . . they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all."
The Russian attacks at the memorial site are significant in that they have been carried out by a country who suffered grievously when Nazi Germany invaded the former Soviet Union in June 1941. Before the German invaders were vanquished, nearly 27 million Soviet citizens had died, including 8.7 million military deaths, including members of President Zelensky’s own family who fought with the Red Army against the Nazis.
Only his grandfather survived. Numerous thousands were murdered by the Nazis at Babyn Yar. President Zelensky is correct. This unprovoked attack, in fact the entire war, goes “beyond humanity.” And to justify the invasion of a free and democratic country on the grounds that it is necessary for its “denazification” is an abuse and a distortion of the memory of the Holocaust.
Putin is following in the footsteps of his Soviet predecessors in trying to erase what history recalls of the murders at Babyn Yar. Just as the Nazis had done before their retreat, Soviet authorities tried to suppress evidence of crimes committed against Jews on what was then Soviet territory even though its own soldiers and citizens were slaughtered by the thousands there. Thankfully they failed, and with Ukraine gaining its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Babyn Yar has taken its rightful place as one of the most important Holocaust remembrance sites.
I first became aware of what happened at Babyn Yar in the mid-1960s when I read Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s 1961 poem “Babi Yar” [the Russian spelling] which he wrote in Kyiv in 1961 after visiting the site. Recalling the Nazi atrocities committed there, Yevtushenko admitted later that he was surprised that it was published for it is a condemnation of all anti-Semitism, including that found in the Soviet Union. It came at a time when the Soviet authorities were using Babi Yar as a garbage pit; there was no memorial to the dead. Shame drove Yevtushenko to return to his hotel and write the poem, a poem about human suffering that overshadows any politics. “It is very difficult to find words which are expressive enough. It was too much for words. Words are too weak.” Nevertheless, he persisted.
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.
I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The anti-Semite have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of the Russian People!”
[ . . . . ]
Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.
And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.
No fiber of my body will forget this.
May “Internationale” thunder and ring *3*
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of anti-Semites on this earth.
There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive
Am I by anti-Semites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!
Now, once again, Putin aggression against Ukraine is an attempt to abuse and distort history. And perhaps once again words are too weak to express what is felt deep in the heart. But we must try. All of us!! It is time to say “Never Again” and mean it!
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