Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

May 11, 2017

Ukraine Finally Comes to Terms with Babi Yar

At last, a monument will stand over Babi Yar.

When the late poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko visited the notorious ravine near Kiev in 1961, he was shocked to find no monument to the 34,000 Jews who were murdered there in September 1941. The absence of any sign of commemoration—which gave Yevtushenko’s poem “Babi Yar” its opening line—was not the result of neglect but of a deliberate Soviet policy of covering up the Holocaust and suppressing any recognition that the Nazis specifically targeted Jews. After gaining independence, Ukraine did little to alter Soviet policies toward Holocaust commemoration, but now, writes Norman Naimark, change is finally coming:

SaveGift