NEW YORK – At the invitation of Ukraine’s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, the newly elected president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), Andriy Futey, and his predecessor, Tamara Olexy, traveled to Ukraine to participate in the official commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy.
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.
Live from Babi Yar in Kiev, Ukraine: The Washington Post’s Andrew Roth visits a memorial dedicated to the victims of Babi Yar, one of the single largest massacres of the Nazi Holocaust. His guests are Natalia A. Feduschak, Director of Communications, Ukrainian Jewish Encounter and Mykhailo Hutor, whose grandmother and mother, Kateryna and Iryna Sikorsky (Hutor) were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, an honorific used by Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
We stand at the edge and watch a family play with a remote-controlled toy car by a playground that’s inside the ravine. A girl tosses a ball in the air as she walks past a monumental menorah and asks her grandmother, “What’s with the celebration?” as she takes note of the flowers and wreaths placed at its stone base.
Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale University, explained how we should remember Babyn Yar today…Hello this is Ukraine Calling. A weekly roundup of what’s been happening in Ukraine, with a focus on a main story. I’m Bohdan Nahaylo, currently with Democracy Reporting International in Ukraine, standing in at Hromadske Radio in Kyiv, and here are the some of the main stories from Ukraine.
Long before Auschwitz, long before Treblinka and Sobibor, there was Babi Yar—the sprawling ravine on the outskirts of Kiev where the Nazis, with support from the locals, murdered 33,771 Jews in a two-day killing spree on September 29 and 30, 1941.
BABI YAR, Ukraine – No Ukrainian has the right to forget the Babi Yar massacre, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Thursday night at the state ceremony to mark 75 years since the Babi Yar slaughter.
Vasily Mikhailovsky was four years old when, in late September 1941, flyers appeared around German-occupied Kyiv, instructing "all Yids" to assemble at an appointed location on the edge of the city. He remembers the day well. "It was wonderful weather," Vasily, who is one of three Babyn Yar survivors in Kyiv still living, told DW. "Sunny. A truly golden autumn day."
BABI YAR, Ukraine — Seventy-five years after Nazi forces and their local Ukrainian collaborators executed nearly 34,000 Jews in a Kiev ravine, Ukraine has begun to open up about its Holocaust-era history and reckon with the role it played in perpetrating one of the worst Nazi massacres of World War II.
"We feel deeply honored that a German orchestra may participate in such a memorial concert," said Daniel Kühnel, director of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra performs at the National Opera in Kyiv on Thursday (29.09.2016). The concert serves as the climax and conclusion of a week of commemorative events in the Ukrainian capital.
Photo: Andrew Waller
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Ukrainians and Jews have lived as neighbours for centuries, creating and sharing enduring cultures that continue to inform their identities today. Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE) is proud to present Part 1 of an integrated narrative of these two peoples in the belief that there is much to be gained by viewing their historical experience together, in all its complexity.
As Ukraine defends its very existence against Russia, the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Timeline serves to counter the malicious and false narratives about Ukraine and its history. The Timeline demonstrates that Ukraine is home to diverse peoples and, for centuries, one of the world’s oldest and largest Jewish communities.
The 'Encounter' prize aims to build on the common experiences of Ukrainians and Jews over the centuries, expressed in literature and nonfiction. The Prize will be awarded annually to the most influential work in literature and nonfiction (in alternate years) that fosters Ukrainian-Jewish understanding, helping solidify Ukraine's place as a multi-ethnic society and giving truth to the motto, "Our stories are incomplete without each other."
The goal of the richly illustrated catalogue is to present an integrated narrative that looks at the experience of these two peoples together, in all its complexity — through periods of crisis, as well as long stretches of normal co-existence and multifaceted cultural interaction from antiquity to 1914.
