Ukraine President Attends 85th Babyn Yar Commemoration Amid War

On September 29-30, 1941, German forces, aided by local collaborators, murdered 33,771 Jews at Babyn Yar near Kyiv. This massacre, part of the "Holocaust by Bullets" which claimed the lives of approximately two million Jews in Eastern Europe through mass shootings, is being commemorated 85 years later. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attended the ceremony, stating, "We must remember the terrible things that happened here many years ago, and now they are happening again, this time at the hands of the Russians." The Soviet regime had suppressed the Jewish identity of the victims, failing to mention they were killed for being Jewish in a 1976 monument. Natan Sharansky called this a "double crime": the murder by Nazis and the silencing by the Soviets. A Menorah monument was erected in 1991, but a comprehensive memorial center's development was halted by the ongoing war. Despite the conflict, research continues, with the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center adding 1,031 new victim names to its database since the war began in February 2022, using documents like birth certificates and legal testimonies. The article draws a parallel between Soviet historical manipulation and current Russian propaganda, which uses the memory of the Nazi victory to justify its invasion of Ukraine. Researchers have analyzed Russian television broadcasts, showing how the term "Nazism" is used to delegitimize Ukraine. The author emphasizes the importance of remembering the individual lives and communities destroyed at Babyn Yar, advocating for continued research, archival access, and education about the "Holocaust by Bullets" to counter historical distortion and manipulation.