KYIV – Once dubbed the “Kyivan Switzerland” for its picturesque landscape in northwestern Kyiv, Babyn Yar (which translates as old woman’s ravine) today is a public park surrounded by a concrete jungle of Soviet-era urban planning.
Two memorials stand here to mark the horrific killing of more than 100,000 people – two-thirds of them Jews – 75 years ago by occupying Nazi German forces in 1941-1943.
History professor Paul Robert Magocsi visited the site for the first time 25 months ago to draw inspiration for conceptualizing this year’s commemoration of the Babyn Yar massacres in Ukraine’s capital for the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, a Canada-based non-profit that works to foster understanding of Ukrainian-Jewish relations.
“It’s essentially a cemetery, a huge killing field. It’s a necropolis, a place for reflection,” Prof. Magocsi told The Ukrainian Weekly before the start of the seven-day commemoration of the tragedy that took place on September 23-29.
In just two days, on September 29-30, 1941, more than 30,000 Jews were slaughtered in the ravine, which the Germans chose to serve essentially as a huge burial pit that required no digging.
Jews residing in the city and the surrounding area had been ordered to march to the site the first morning. Due to Soviet propaganda and misinformation, many weren’t aware of the Nazis’ racist policies towards the Jews. And because of the nearby freight train station, some marchers thought they would be deported to Palestine.
The Nazis would continue using the site to kill more Jews, Ukrainian patriots, Communist Party members, Roma, homosexuals and other so-called “undesirables” before retreating in 1943.
“As a result, we wanted to do something that has lasting value for Ukraine as a state, and for Jews and ethnic Ukrainians living within the boundaries of Ukraine, and outside the boundaries of Ukraine,” said Prof. Magocsi of the two-year commemoration planning period.
As a board director at the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, the New Jersey native eschewed the typical conference format, where “academics from various aspects of the profession come give papers, and then begin to plan, ‘wouldn’t it be great to publish something,’ and this happens two to eight years from that time in which the whole process and interest will have changed by then,” he said.
Instead, 1,000 foreign delegates gathered in Kyiv for the solemn anniversary and were treated to a unique format of commemorations consisting of film screenings, art shows, the presentation of a book on Babyn Yar that was co-edited by Prof. Magocsi and panel discussions, all of which was topped off by a commemorative concert.
“My goal was, which is rarely done, to prepare a book before the meeting and [be] ready at the time during the conference, and in this case the symposium. And to plan it actually as a coherent work,” Prof. Magocsi said of “Babyn Yar: History and Memory.”
“We created a table of contents, and then started to engage authors and asked them to write about something very specific that we need for the book with a specific number of pages, etc. As a result, it’s not easy to produce a book within two years, edit and translate passages because it’s in Ukrainian and English.”
Great effort was also placed on engaging young people from various parts of the world to attend the commemoration, including from Ukraine and Israel.
“The future belongs to young people. Can one work with older people who have fixed memories and fixed ideas about the past and the present?” Prof. Magocsi commented. “Well, one can try, but the possibility of success is limited. Young people, on the other hand, usually are more open-minded, and indeed that is the case fortunately with young people in post-Communist independent Ukraine, as well as other parts of the world.”
Another feature was to present three winning landscaping designs for Babyn Yar. Prior to the event, an international jury chose three project designs that were submitted by architects from Slovenia, France and the United States.
“The idea is to motivate thinking on what to with Babyn Yar as a public space,” Prof. Magocsi explained.
A menorah memorial stands there now; it was erected after Ukraine gained independence in 1991. An earlier, Soviet-era monument at the site doesn’t mention Jewish victims, but only Soviet citizens and prisoners of war.
Speaking of Babyn Yar as a precursor to the Holocaust, Prof. Magocsi noted that the commemoration was taking place as Russia wages war against Ukraine and has been persecuting Crimean Tatars on the peninsula that it illegally annexed in March 2014.
“In time of war, it’s appropriate to pause and reflect on what happened. A new level of awareness is required,” the Princeton-educated professor said.
Prof. Magocsi observed that acts of genocide in Europe and elsewhere in the world ensued after the Holocaust.
“We need educational programs to inform – ideas that certain things shouldn’t ever happen again,” he said. “One should be aware of what happened in the past through historical knowledge.”
He also spoke of Ukrainian-Jewish relations over the last 1,000 years.
“For a millennium, Ukrainians and Jews co-existed. They interacted, mostly in the Black Sea region, including in Crimea,” said Prof. Magocsi who also co-authored “Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence.” The book was released by Ukrainian Jewish Encounter before the 75th anniversary commemorations of the Babyn Yar massacres.
Jews arrived en masse in what is modern-day Ukraine in the mid-16th century. “Over 450 years, there were six periods when Jews were singled out by ethnic Ukrainians totaling 16-20 years. Otherwise, they mostly lived a normal life,” he said of Jews living side-by-side with Ukrainians.