the plans came “dangerously close to a Holocaust Disneyland”

April 18, 2022 10:40 AM

On how to commemorate Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), the mass grave outside of Kyiv. Note: This story was conceived and written before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Apart from the addition of updates to reflect recent developments, we chose not to substantially alter the piece.
posted by spamandkimchi (4 comments total)

This paragraph should have been included after the cut.

Babi Yar represented “the very first time in history [that] a metropolitan city in Europe lost virtually all of its remaining Jewish inhabitants to premeditated murder,” Berkhoff writes in a report on the site. It has been called the place where the Holocaust “began,” the site of the single largest mass shooting of Jews in what is now referred to as the “Holocaust by Bullets”: the Holocaust that preceded the gas chambers, the Holocaust conducted in close proximity, the perpetrators aiming their guns at their victims’ backs. This was the Holocaust visited upon large swaths of Eastern Europe in the early years of the war, the Holocaust that wiped out the old Jewish communities of the Pale of Settlement and beyond.

posted by spamandkimchi at 10:42 AM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Denver has a 27-acre Babi Yar memorial park. Not sure "park" is the right word, but it is beautiful, and the signage and the architectural elements are sobering.
posted by kozad at 7:32 PM on April 18, 2022

I am glad I read the article. Thank you for posting.
posted by hoyland at 5:01 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

This article led me to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 (Babi Yar), the lyrics of which contain references to the Dreyfus Affair.

I learned a lot.

And that's how I spent my Bicycle Day.
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 6:35 AM on April 19, 2022