Jews at Babi Yar during World War II, a tragedy denied during decades of Communism.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was hosting the service at the ravine near Kiev where the mass killings took place. Israeli President Moshe Katsav and other Jewish leaders also attended the ceremony.
Hundreds of mourners — many Jews who had traveled from around the world — watched, clutching their own offerings of red and white carnations, eyewitnesses said. Some carried small stones, which Jews traditionally leave at grave sites as a sign of respect. “For me, it is not just memories,” MosNews website quoted Dina Maydanyk, 74, as saying. Here three brothers died in the Holocaust. "It’s a horror," she added.
The service was to be followed by a forum on xenophobia and anti-Semitism, organized by Ukrainian authorities and Jewish Holocaust experts, amid growing concern of anti-Jewish attacks across the region. President Yushchenko, who played a key role in the Orange Revolution for more freedom, opened an exhibition on the massacre Tuesday, September 26, where he described the Holocaust as a "deep wound" for all nations.
NAZI FORCES
The massacre began on September 29, 1941, when Nazi forces who had just occupied Ukraine’s capital ordered its Jewish residents to gather at a ravine. Many Jews believed they would be evacuated. But, the Nazis instead began two days of executions, killing about 33,000 Jews and throwing their bodies into a large pit, historians say.
Over the next two years, the Nazis killed tens of thousands of other people at the site, including Jews, Gypsies who prefer to be known as Roma, and prisoners of war. Historians believes as many as 100,000 people were killed, but the exact number may never be known. Nazi forces ordered Jewish prisoners to dig up the corpses and burn them in 1943 before retreating from Ukraine as the Soviet army approached.
"I saw how the Germans were laughing and joking when they looked at the people they were bringing to their death," said Nina Isayeva, 82, who came to pay tribute to the victims. “What barbarians they were."
Moshe Kantor, founder of the World Holocaust Forum that is organizing the events, said that the world’s silence after Babi Yar emboldened the Nazis to embark on their “final solution” of death camps that ultimately killed six million European Jews.
SOVIET SILENCE
For decades, the Soviets maintained silence about what happened in Babi Yar, MosNews observed. Only after Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko drew international attention to the massacre with his 1961 poem "Babi Yar," did the Soviets put up a towering monument of twisted and tormented figures.
It did not mention Jews, however. It wasn’t until 1991, as the Soviet Union began to crumble, that Jews were allowed to erect a menorah near another part of the ravine.
Today, the ravine is part of a popular park, and Jewish leaders are reportedly frustrated that children still play soccer and couples picnic where tens of thousands were massacred. Wednesday’s commemorations were being held at the Soviet memorial, although the Jewish community reportedly held an earlier private ceremony at the menorah across the park. (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from Ukraine).
