Chabad of Ukraine At Babi Yar Memorial

In his famous poem on Babi Yar, Yevgeny Yetushenko wrote, Here all things scream silently . . .

Government representatives and other officials who came yesterday to a memorial service at Babi Yar would probably agree with the poet. To those who remember the murdered, the silent screams must be deafening.

On September 29, 1941 two days before Yom Kippur, the Nazis posted the following sign in Kiev:

“All [Jews] living in the city of Kiev and its vicinity are to report by 8 o’clock on the morning of Monday, September 29th, 1941, at the corner of Melnikovsky and Dokhturov Streets (near the cemetery). They are to take with them documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes, underwear, etc. Any [Jew] not carrying out this instruction and who is found elsewhere will be shot. Any civilian entering flats evacuated by [Jews] and stealing property will be shot.”

By the time they were done two days later, 33,771 Jews were murdered—most of them on Yom Kippur. Many more would subsequently be killed there.

The men, women and children were ordered in small groups of 10 to stand at the edge of a deep ravine, where they were killed by machine-gun, their bodies falling into the ravine as they were shot. Two years later, the Nazis put other prisoner to work to eliminate evidence and burn the bodies.

With no markers for the thousands massacred here, a memorial service is held every year at the ravine known as Babi Yar. Yesterday representatives of the Federation of Jewish Communities paid respects to the victims of Babi Yar. Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, philanthropist Lev Leviev of the Chabad Ohr Avner institutions in Russia, and Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Rabbi Ezriel Chaikin were joined by Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, Shlomo Amar, Israel’s Minister of Treasury Benyamin Netanyahu, and the Israeli Ambassador to the Ukraine, Naomi ben Ami.

“Even sixty three years after this massacre,”observed Mr. Leviev, “the seeds of anti-Semitism are sprouting once again in Europe. We must not overlook a single act of anti-Semitism.”