BEHIND EVERY NAME IS A PERSON: PIECING TOGETHER THE STORIES OF BABYN YAR
IHRA
His father remarried after the war, and he grew up not knowing about his real mother. It was only when he joined a new school, which required his family to share his birth certificate with his mother’s name on it, that other children teased him for being Jewish. He asked his father to explain, and finally, the truth came out. Yevheniia was one of approximately 33, 771 people who were murdered in and around the ravine known as Babyn Yar over two days in September 1941. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Kyiv was killed, and their remains left in a mass grave just around the corner from where they had lived.
In contrast to the Nazi’s typical record-keeping, many of the victims were not even registered first. This is one reason many of the victims are not known. But as a site of massacre, there are layers obscuring the stories of the people who were murdered there: layers of history, of geography, and of bureaucracy.
Sometimes, as in Viktor’s story, the truth is so hidden that the families of the victims themselves struggle to find out what happened.
Restoring memory through archives and testimony
The “Names” project by the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Ukraine is trying to change this. An IHRA grant recipient, they are seeking Holocaust survivors and their descendants to restore the stories of people who were killed in the largest single massacre perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators in Eastern Europe.
Last year, they uncovered 200 new names of individuals who were victims of mass executions at Babyn Yar, previously unlisted in any records of the deceased, and added over 100 of their photographs. The Memorial Center has compiled the most comprehensive database to date, containing 29,551 victim names.
Digitizing the past amid conflict
Working with original documents during a war is far from simple. Inna Kalenska, project curator, tells us about some of the challenges faced by the project team: “For the first year of the full-scale invasion, it was the darkest time and the most difficult time for us, for our organization, but we try to stay committed to our mission.”
One of their most crucial efforts is digitizing documents, especially those in high-conflict zones. 60% of the state archives of Kharkiv were destroyed by Russian troops, she says, and many other archival institutions were damaged. Thanks to its partnership with the State Archival Service of Ukraine, the Memorial Center has been able to digitize over 5 million historical documents from various regions across the country since the
Through careful archival work and family testimony, researchers in Ukraine are uncovering the stories of those killed at Babyn Yar. Viktor Zinkevych didn’t know that his mother had died at Babyn Yar, or even that he was Jewish, until he was 12 years old. When the Nazis invaded Kyiv, he was only a baby. His mother, Yevheniia Leibovna Pechenyk, was taken away after being identified as Jewish by their neighbors. Luckily, Viktor’s grandmother was able to hide him, and he survived.
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