U.S. State Department on Babyn Yar anniversary

Following is the text of a statement delivered on September 28 in Washington by State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher on the 60th anniversary of the Nazi atrocities at Babyn Yar. The statement, as printed below, was released by the State Department's Office of International Information Programs.

September 29 marks the 60th year since the atrocities at Babi Yar, one of the most notorious events of the Holocaust. During a two-day period in 1941, Nazi soldiers killed over 33,000 people, most of them Jews, from the region in and around occupied Kiev [sic], then part of Soviet Ukraine. Through the last year of World War II, the ultimate toll of those murdered, including Jews, Roma, homosexuals and others, is believed to have reached 100,000.

As a symbol of mass murder Babi Yar will never be forgotten. Today, we welcome and celebrate the resurgence of religious freedom in Ukraine since the end of the Soviet Union, including the rebirth and steady growth of a thriving Jewish community. The memory of the evil committed at Babi Yar serves today to strengthen our resolve to defend the values of freedom, tolerance and human dignity.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October 7, 2001, No. 40, Vol. LXIX

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