Though the Babi Yar 75th anniversary commemoration events in Kiev are slated to continue for at least another four days and the German government’s own program of activities has yet to begin, the final and signature events of the weeklong commemoration took place on Thursday.
“No gravestone stands on Babyn Yar,” wrote the Soviet poet Yevgeniy Yevtushenko in 1961. He was condemning the Soviet regime’s failure to acknowledge the Babyn Yar tragedy twenty-five years after World War II had ended.
On September 29, 1941, the Nazis carried out a massacre by bullets against almost 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children at the Babi Yar ravine outside of Kiev. Under the shadow of Ukraine’s continued conflict with Russia, the government of President Petro Poroshenko has embarked on the most comprehensive and committed memorializing of the events in the history of the Ukrainian state.
KIEV—The soil of Babi Yar is the color of pulverized ashes, its sooty gray and green landscape interrupted by the occasional trash heap. The sprawling park, just a few metro stops away from Kiev’s city center, was once dubbed “Kiev’s Switzerland” for its seemingly placid, plunging landscape.
KIEV – “If you force Jewish history out of Ukrainian history, then there is no Ukrainian history that makes any sense,” prominent Holocaust scholar Prof. Timothy Snyder said on Monday at a week-long conference in Kiev dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre.
Prof. Paul Robert Magocsi, Member of the Board of Directors, Ukrainian Jewish Encounter. Paul Hunka, opera singer, art director of the Ukrainian Art Song Project, chairperson for commemorative concert. Oksana Lyniv, conductor of the...
The official 75th anniversary commemorations of the Nazi massacres that took place at the Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv will take place in the Ukrainian capital between September 23-29. The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, a Canada-based non-governmental organization, working in cooperation with the World Jewish Congress, Ukraine’s government and other Ukrainian Jewish and diaspora organizations, will also sponsor a series of public events in memory of what took place.
Local and foreign activists see Ukraine become a mature nation, as it prepares big program to commemorate the genocide of Jewish people this autumn. Read more.
In the framework of commemoration of the Babyn Yar tragedy on the occasion of its 75th anniversary, an international architectural competition of ideas “Memorial park: Babyn Yar – the Dorohozhychi necropolis” was held in Ukraine.
On September 29, 2016 will mark the 75th anniversary of Babyn Yar tragedy. During the upcoming week Kyiv will host a series of commemorative events. The events include a youth conference, a public symposium, commemoration of the victims in public space and a commemorative concert, announced Prof. Paul Robert Magocsi, Member of the Board of Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, at a press briefing held at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
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.
Since its launch in September 2022, the UJE Timeline has earned international recognition by winning eight international awards:
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.
