Israel Kasnett: Over the years, a number of attempts were, in fact, made to commemorate the victims—most of whom were Jewish, though thousands of Roma, mental patients, POWs, Soviet prisoners and Ukrainian dissidents were killed there as well by the Nazis.
Israel Kasnett:“The majority of killers were German. We have a few names of Ukrainians, but they played secondary roles for the simple reason that the Germans wanted to steal the Jews’ belongings. A genocide is a killing, but it is also stealing,” said Father Patrick Desbois.
Israel Kasnett: On the 80th anniversary of the mass genocide the Nazis and their collaborators committed against Ukrainian Jews, a memorial centre being built on the site will tell the story of the 1941 atrocity.
Herzog is to take part in an official ceremony inaugurating Kyiv’s Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Eighty years after the Babi Yar massacre, rare photographs that tell the story of the Soviet-era struggle to commemorate the atrocity have been released for the first time by the National Library of Israel's Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP).
Hundreds of Jewish leaders from across the globe including Australia's Dr Danny Lamm, have taken part in a ceremony at Babi Yar in Ukraine, where an estimated 50,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
