BABYN YAR WILL BE A MEMORIAL
OF 2.5 MILLION JEWS
SHOT BY BULLETS
Babyn Yar is a symbol for a missing part of Holocaust education and remembrance. Further west, camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen Belsen and what they represented have been etched into human consciousness, in part since they have been preserved to one degree or another. Visitors can walk the prison barracks, witness the remnants of the crematoria, and see the canisters of chemical poison in the showers.
The totality of the genocide is tangible with these physical focal points, but the concentration camps are only part of the history of the Holocaust. The murder of 2.5 million Jews in Eastern Europe in mass shootings has too often been overlooked.
Their story was different, but no less tragic. As the Nazis conquered Soviet territory during Operation Barbarossa, they routinely marched Jews from their homes in cities, towns and villages and shot them dead in nearby forests, ravines, and empty fields. Many Jewish communities were wiped out by bullets.
In fact, the Jewish victims of massacres such as Babyn Yar were killed twice over. They were physically murdered by the Nazis and then their memory was effectively obliterated by the Soviet Union. The particular suffering of minorities including Jews, did not conform with the universalist Soviet narrative. As a result, throughout Soviet Eastern Europe nothing was done to document or commemorate these mass executions. In many cases, the Soviets actively attempted to destroy evidence of these awful crimes.
At Babyn Yar, the site was leveled. Soviet authorities turned the immediate area into a waste site and built housing and motorways. A sports stadium was planned to be built on the site. The only evidence of the horrors which had taken place, was a modest, amorphous monument erected in 1976, to the Soviet victims of Nazism. No mention of Jews. Things began to change in 1991 with an independent Ukraine, when authorities erected a monument commemorating the systematic murder of Jews.
As we approach the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre, there are still challenges to the commemoration of the ‘Holocaust by bullets.’ Babyn Yar is the largest mass grave in Europe, and the single mass shooting event of Jews, but it is still just one of many many sites.
What makes the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ so haunting is the fact that so many were killed so close to their homes. Neighbors, colleagues and friends would have seen the victims being led to their deaths. Of course, these witnesses are fast dwindling and so the challenge of memory is more acute today than ever before.
Therefore, the work of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) to commemorate and educate about the event is so important, comprising a dedicated complex of memory and education about this angle of the Nazi genocide.
BYHMC is investing into new archival work which has helped identify more than 1,400 new names of previously unknown victims, bringing the total number of known names to more than 28,500. Innovative 3D technology has pinpointed the exact location of the massacre, while a groundbreaking educational concept, the RED DOT project, will increase knowledge through user contributions. Meanwhile, new archival video materials were uncovered and weaved into a Cannes award winning film Babyn Yar.Context by Sergei Loznitza.
Importantly, efforts must also be made to physically commemorate those who were rounded up and shot. In Germany, France and elsewhere, the points of deportation are routinely given the respect of a memorial. Similarly, many cities in Western Europe feature ‘Stolperstein’ stepping stones, marking where Jewish Holocaust victims once lived. By contrast, mass graves where thousands upon thousands were murdered in Eastern Europe, have remained unmarked. Babyn Yar provides an example in rectifying this, where efforts are being made to fittingly remember those murdered there. During the past year, BYHMC has unveiled a series of installation memorials and a symbolic synagogue.
Some of these installations include the ‘Glance into the Past’, monuments utilizing photography which invite the visitors to take a peek into the built-in lenses and see pictures taken in the past from the very spot of the monument. These installations stand on the very spots where a number of historical photographs of Babyn Yar were taken. Looking through the lenses, which are mounted on rocks, visitors see pictures after the massacre taken in early October 1941.
Another installation is the ‘Mirror Field’, made entirely of stainless steel, the structure features a podium in the form of a mirror disk with a diameter of about 40 meters, with 10 6-meter-high columns installed on it. The columns and the disk were shot through by bullets of the same caliber that the Nazis used during execution in Babyn Yar.
The names of victims sound at the installation around the clock. During the day, the sky is reflected in it. At night, light and sounds of memory pass through the bullet holes, while rays from the tops of the columns illuminate the sky.
Additional powerful memorials will be unveiled later this year to mark the massacre’s 80th anniversary. Visitors will have no doubt about the exact death that took place there.
“Never Again” demands bringing tragedies such as Babyn Yar to greater academic and public attention. The work of BYHMC provides real insight into how the challenges of Holocaust remembrance can be overcome, despite decades of attempted suppression of the horrors.
In 2008, Father Patrick Desbois coined the phrase “Holocaust by Bullets”, to describe the systematic mass execution of about 2.5 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis in fields and ravines near their homes across Eastern Europe. Desbois’ painstaking efforts in interviewing over 8,500 witnesses across Eastern Europe to piece together the full extent of these crimes, is a major contribution to the field of Holocaust studies and commemoration. There is no more powerful example than Babyn Yar. On the 29th and 30th of September 1941, the Nazis rounded up the Jews of Kyiv and led them to the Babyn Yar ravine, where close to 34.000 people were systematically shot dead. In just 48 hours, the city’s Jewish community was decimated.
Ruslan Kavatsiuk
Deputy CEO, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center