Ukraine, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial's controversial design unveiled

Ukraine is preparing to welcome what some media outlets are already calling the world’s largest Holocaust memorial. The memorial will honor the victims of the massacre at Babyn Yar (“Babij Jar” in Russian), a site, near the capital Kiev, where between Sept. 29 and 30, 1941, the Nazis killed 33,771 Kiev Jews, according to the same reports compiled by the Germans at the end of the massacre. As far as is known, this is the second or third largest mass murder in Holocaust history, preceded only by the Operation Erntefest massacre in Poland in 1943 (over 42,000 killed) and perhaps the Odessa massacre of 1941 (although on the latter the numbers are estimated and not everyone agrees). The memorial project has a cost of $100 million and features Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky as artistic director, who will be working with a team of professionals and artists (there will also be Marina Abramović, who moreover appeared in one of Khrzhanovsky’s films).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also spoke about the project (which was unveiled last Jan. 25) on Memorial Day, during a ceremony to commemorate the massacre, at which a a monument was unveiled, entitled A glimpse into the past, created by Ukrainian artist Anna Kamyshan, also part of the team for the new memorial (the work depicts a tree with broken branches, as a metaphor for the broken lives of the Jews who lost their lives in the massacre). “It is a moral duty,” Zelensky said, “to remember the victims of the Holocaust who were killed here in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. The monument we unveiled today and the construction of the large Holocaust Memorial in Babyn Yar are an essential part of this. Babyn Yar represents a dark moment in Ukraine’s history, but by commemorating it in this way we create light and hope for the future.”

Currently, Babyn Yar houses a documentation center, open to the public, that tells what happened at the site during the massacre. However, during the years of the Soviet Union, Babyn Yar became a large park, still a gathering place for Kiev residents, and because of this, according to Khrzhanovsky, there is a risk of losing awareness of what happened there. The announcement of the construction of the new memorial was made on September 29, 2016 (the anniversary of the massacre), and completion is scheduled for 2026. The future complex, according to the plan unveiled on January 25, will house several buildings: The Museum of the Babyn Yar Massacre, the Museum of the Holocaust in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, the Museum of Forgetting the Babyn Yar Massacre, the Museum of the History of the Site, an installation dedicated to the names of the victims of the massacre, a prayer site that will include a synagogue, a church, a mosque and a space for all denominations, a research center, a conference space, a media library, a library, archives, an education space for children, and a rehabilitation center for psychological trauma. The first building to be constructed will be the synagogue, and the project has been entrusted to architect Manuel Herz, a professor at the University of Basel. Also announced is the full list of artists and architects who will participate in the construction of the complex: Nick Axel, Robert Jan van Pelt, Troy Conrad Therrien, Ines Weizman, Adrien Gardere, Barbara Holzer, Martin Dean, Manuel Herz, Sergei Loznitsa, Ilya Khrzhanovsky (who, as mentioned, is entrusted with the role of artistic director of the entire operation), Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Vyacheslav Mishiev, Boris Berenfeld, Anna Kamyshan, Maksym Rokmaniko, Ksenia Marchenko, Oleh Shovenko, Anna Furman, Marina Abramović, Alexey Makukhin, Dasha Dzhuromskaya and Max Yakover.

“The tragedy of the Holocaust, and particularly that of Babyn Yar, goes back eighty years,” Khrzhanovsky explained. “Today we are losing the generation of the last witnesses of the tragedy. The direct connection with those times will soon disappear, and future generations will lose the opportunity to know, know, and, most importantly, emotionally participate in what happened 80 years ago. Our goal is to transform the abstract into something alive, into something that has an emotional influence, that can evoke emotion, a sense of love for others, a sense of shame for the humanity that allowed this to happen, a sense of tenderness and sorrow for losing an entire world. We aim to create a place that will make Babyn Yar’s story close, relevant to everyone, regardless of one’s nationality, gender, age or religion.” According to Irina Bokova, former director-general of UNESCO and a member of the memorial’s supervisory board, there are “several impressive aspects” that the memorial will be able to elicit, “and there will be innovative ways, as well as an emotional component. Based on my previous experiences, including at UNESCO, I can say that it is not very easy to preserve memory, even when there are dedicated spaces. The team is moving in the right direction.”

However, the project has received a lot of criticism, not only in recent days. In the Wall Street Journal last July, journalist Vladislav Davidzon, editor in chief of the Odessa Review newspaper, spoke of a “Holocaust Disneyland”: “Khrzhanovsky’s vision of the project,” he wrote, “is disturbing.” What Davidzon does not like is the possibility that an immersive space will be created at Babyn Yar where visitors will play the roles of Nazis, Jews, and Ukrainian collaborationists. In fact, in the summer there was talk of the possibility of guiding visitors directly into the horror through the use of virtual reality, and this was also based on Khrzhanovsky’s previous experiences (with his DAU project, for example, he created an immersive show that reconstructed life in the Soviet Union, complete with actors). Criticism along the same lines also came from historian Karel Berkhoff, who had been involved in the project but resigned in the spring. Resignation also for Dieter Bogner, one of the curators who were part of the team. And also in May eighty cultural figures wrote a letter to the members of the supervisory committee calling for Khrzhanovsky’s removal from his post.

At the moment, however, it is still unclear whether and how interactive content will be developed, partly because there are no official announcements about it. However, yesterday Professor Van Pelt, a historian and expert on Auschwitz, let it be known, when interviewed by the Jerusalem Post, that the key word will be “attunement.” “How,” he said, “can we get visitors to tune in so that they begin to actually look at a place like this, whose appearance has changed profoundly since 1941, so that they can begin to understand what’s behind it?” Khrzhanovsky, also in yesterday’s edition of the Jerusalem Post, said that “you will have to have something where you can experience the past as something real, something that exists now, something that is connected to you.” In short, there is nothing officially set yet, but the discussion around the large memorial does not stop.

Pictured: the Babyn Yar Synagogue according to a rendering by Manuel Herz’s studio.

Ukraine, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial's controversial design unveiled

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