Over two days, beginning on September 28, 1941, Kyiv’s Jews were gathered up under the pretense that they were to be resettled.

There, in what was then the edge of the city, but now minutes away from the city’s center, at a place called Babyn Yar, they were stripped of their clothes and their belongings taken. Individuals and families were then marched naked and taken to a ravine.

Then as now, the ravine was deep, yet too small to be called a valley. It was surrounded by bushes and trees, their green leaves in the process of turning color. Then, systematically, those of Abraham’s children born of the chorno zem, a soil capable of feeding millions and millions, as well as producing writers, politicians, artists and musicians who impacted world history, they were ordered to stand at the edge of the ravine.

As they stood along its edges, they were machine gunned. Their bodies tumbled down into the ravine, soon creating layers and layers of dead corpses. Those who had not immediately died, where found, and shot by those Germans who had stood on the corpses of the others to ensure that all would be dead.

After two days, 32,271 human beings, the Jews of Kyiv, had been murdered. This is a fact that cannot be denied. But it was. First by the Nazis, then by the Soviets.

To contemplate Babyn Yar you must go to the edge of the ravine. You can still stand at the edge of that ravine today and easily look into it. It’s not dangerously deep, but just deep enough.

At that moment, you are challenged to imagine, to contemplate the brutal indignities that had been perpetrated on fellow human beings. But your imagination must remain disciplined, for the fact before you, the thousands of corpses, is not a whimsy, but a developing awareness and recognition of the brutal and of that which is a standard evil. For what else can you call acts of the deliberate destruction of human life.

And as you walk along the edge, you begin to combine the emotion of what you imagine, with the facts, and your reason opens the gate to the pilgrimage, for Babyn Yar is a sacred place, to the road of understanding of the meaning of human life, yes, in the past, but also in the present and the future.

It’s then that you can even begin to ascribe meaning. Only then will you begin to consider: how will I choose to remember? How must I think of this? Only then will you ask yourself: what is to be done? And then perhaps, you will ask yourself, hopefully joining with others: how is it that we should live?

For it is the staring into the ravine and walking along its edge where the essential truth of Babyn Yar will be found.

Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeir, who spoke at the 80^th commemoration, standing no more than one hundred meters from the edge of that ravine who spoke the words that seemed most poignant for the occasion:

“It was Germans who perpetrated these atrocities. This act – it was not an act of reprisal. The mass murder of Kyiv’s Jews was a meticulously planned crime – planned and carried out by members of the SS, the security police and the Wehrmacht. All of them were involved”.

He continued, “I am here today to remember. Because we must remember in order to recognise where untrammelled hatred and nationalism, antisemitism and vile racist doctrines can lead … Here, in Ukraine, whole swathes of land were to be systematically “cleansed” – that was the wording of the orders – and Kyiv was to be razed to the ground. I stand before you today as Germany’s Federal President and bow down before the dead in grief and sorrow”.

Poignant, and probably ironic, because here was the highest representative of a state that had perpetrated such heinous crimes both against human beings, and a national peoples’ and who, in the expression of sympathy, was now providing a history lesson, humbly, as to how to “do” history in a country aspiring to build a society based on human dignity and the rule of law and whose seen the murder of many of its citizens.

Here were the themes: the pursuit and public statement of historic fact; the need, or the duty to admit and accept one’s actions; to take or assume responsibility for them; undertake and submit to self-judgement, to make a confession, to express regret, to publicly repent, to express compassion to the victims, to be humble.

In every way, he articulated the essentials that need to be demanded from ideologically and authoritarian inspired perpetrators of crimes against human dignity.

The commemorization of Babyn Yar on its 80^th anniversary, in one way, publicaly revealed that an attempt of institutionalizing the memory of Babyn Yar in Ukraine, inspired by the principle of the sanctity of individual human dignity, was in progress. This is a monumental development in a post-Soviet country and on land that has been a stage for so many grotesque performances against human dignity.

There have been great plans announced for the site, some say they are too ambitious and even Disney-like. But what must be remembered, is that from the beginning, the ground of Babyn Yar is sacred. It must remain so. Hallowed. Consecrated. Dedicated only to providing a voice whose clarion, in the names of the victims, articulates the sanctity, and even the holiness of what it means to be human. This is the most authentic form of memorialization and what is required.

The renowned French philosopher Bernard- Henri Levy said in an interview soon after Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity” that one of Ukraine’s primary exports is its spirituality. Yet, one essential element during the commemoration was missing, ordinary citizens and the true leaders of Ukraine’s civil democratic society who represent them. There was a feeling of exclusivity and elitism: a memorialization as spectacle, a lack of sensitivity towards the spirit of democratization that now permeates Ukrainian society. The presence of oligarchs only continues to infect Ukrainian society and all that they touch. The omission was glaring, needlessly unfortunate and a possible detriment to the long-term efficacy of incorporating the essence of the Jewish Ukrainian encounter into a new and democratic national narrative within Ukraine. Ukrainians do not need to either be taught or told how to mourn their fellow Ukrainians. They must be allowed to do so.

In Ukraine, Jews are nashi, a term pregnant with intimate and even familial connotations. Babyn Yar is a historical trauma in Ukraine because it signifies the loss of those who were “ours”.  And so, in the grieving, in the ordering of memories, Babyn Yar must essentially be a form of remembrance and memorialization that takes place, first and foremost, within the family. Then others may come to learn.

It seems as if destiny has chosen Ukraine, its people and its land to play an auspicious role on the world stage. In bearing the burden of its suffering, it must translate its experience and articulate, like an actor, this suffering into a modern credo about the dignity of human life.

Let these stories, these emerging narratives, be done, yes, with dignity, but also with respect to the grieving and traditions of mourning of the soil upon which these criminal atrocities have taken place.

-------------------------------------------

By: Nicholas Waller
Title: Contemplating the legacy of Babyn Yar
Sourced From: www.neweurope.eu/article/contemplating-the-legacy-of-babyn-yar/
Published Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2021 06:29:29 +0000

Read More