80 years and several failed projects, Ukraine inaugurates historic memorial to Babyn Yar victims
Ukraines government inaugurated a memorial complex to the victims of the Babyn Yar massacre this week, 80 years after the tragedy that has long been a flashpoint in the countrys collective Holocaust memory.
The memorial at the Babyn Yar site, where Nazis and local collaborators killed some 33,000 Jews in a ravine near Kiev in September 1941, is still under construction. But it currently features a quartz crystal-studded Wall of Crying, designed by the famed Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović, and a new wooden synagogue above the only portion of the ravine, into which victims were ordered to lie before they were shot, that remains visible.
By 2026, its organizers say, the center will also house museum space and additional monuments. It costs around $100 million and is privately funded. A large portion of the funding has come from a group of billionaires, including Russian Mikhail Fridman and Ukraine-born Viktor Pinchuk, who are both Jewish.
Various initiatives to commemorate Babyn Yar victims had previously failed to materialize and, for decades, the only reminders of the tragedy were a couple of small and neglected monuments.
The time for memory has come, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, at the inauguration ceremony.
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