Alex Grobman, Book Review Babi Yar and the Holocaust Moscow Tried to Bury – The Jewish Link
https://jewishlink.news/babi-yar-and-the-holocaust-moscow-tried-to-bury/
On September 29-30, 1941, the eve of Yom Kippur, the Germans murdered 33,771 Jewish men, women and children in Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), almost four miles from the center of Kiev, the capital of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic. Although Babi Yar was “not the largest Holocaust-era mass murder site on Soviet soil,” it was significant for two reasons, explains historian Shay Pilnik, director of the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Yeshiva University. Kiev, with a Jewish population of 160,000, was “the hub for Jewish culture” and the first European capital to become Judenrein (free of Jews) during the Holocaust.
Babi Yar’s Uniqueness
Pilnik quotes historian Lucy Dawidowicz, who remarked that the “unprecedented” pace of the killings, which occurred within 36 hours, is the second reason for Babi Yar’s importance. The numbers established “a record in the annals of mass murder,” she said. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the total capacity of the four gas chambers and crematoria was a maximum of 6,000 a day at its peak.
Another justification for Babi Yar’s uniqueness, Pilnik said, was that although the site “was not the largest killing field during World War II in the Soviet Union, the approximate number of 100,000 dead in Babi Yar, the overwhelming majority of whom were Jewish, helped establish Babi Yar’s position as the centerpiece of the Holocaust in the USSR.”
Murders continued at Babi Yar for a number of months, Dawidowicz said, but never to the extent as on September 29-30, when 33,771 Jews were slaughtered simply because they were Jews. Pilnik estimates “a minimum of 10,000 non-Jews” were murdered, “among whom were Russians, Ukrainians, and Roma,” who were buried on the site.
Role of Ukrainian Militiamen
Ukrainian militiamen, supervised by Germans, ordered the Jews to undress, she said. Those who balked, who resisted, were assaulted, their clothes ripped off. Naked, bleeding people were everywhere. Screams and hysterical laughter filled the air. Some people’s hair turned gray on the spot. Others went mad in moments.”
The executions lasted for an hour at a time before the men were relieved and another group took over. At certain points, the Germans and Ukrainian militiamen went down to the ravine, “trampling over the bodies” to make sure the Jews were dead, pushing them down to allow more to be buried, and then covering the bodies with sand from the quarry.
Significantly, some Ukrainians not involved in murdering Jews offered to assist their friends, although most watched “with indifference.” In many instances, they expropriated the dead Jews’ apartments and possessions.
“Evolution of Memory”
Pilnik examines the development of Babi Yar as a literary memorial from the end of the war by exploring the initial works on the theme in Russian, Yiddish and Ukrainian, and the political background in which they were written. Nikita Khrushchev, who succeeded Joseph Stalin as the head of the Soviet Union, was one of the crucial decision-makers in deciding the future of the physical site of Babi Yar and “as a literary phenomenon.”
For many years, while acknowledging Babi Yar as the mass cemetery of Jews, Moscow sought to portray Jews as defenders of their motherland. They were portrayed as having been murdered as Soviet citizens of Jewish origin, not because they were Jews. Thus, the Russians counted the Jews among the estimated 27 million Soviet victims of the Holocaust.
Focusing on the particular tragedy of the Jews in the Soviet Union and not beyond its borders enabled the Russians to minimize or ignore the Final Solution. They feared that any connection between the attempt to destroy the Jews of Europe and the annihilation of Soviet Jewry would diminish the “noble sacrifices made by millions of Soviet citizens” in the “life-or-death war” against Germany.
The Soviets’ reluctance to acknowledge the unprecedented assault against the Jews affected the way the destruction was “inconsistently” portrayed in literary works, journalism and reporting on the war. Mention of the Holocaust was neither prohibited nor considered an acceptable topic.
A more honest and open examination of why the ravine had been “neglected” occurred when Khrushchev reversed his policy about expressing dissent. This took place after he had consolidated his power and the emergence of “a young, dynamic, and vocal group of intellectuals,” who demanded artistic freedom.
At the Twenty-Second Party Congress, held in October 1961, he appeared to signal his willingness to back their “liberal, left-leaning” political participation and allow them to publish their works.
“Babi Yar”
One of the group of young people who were in their late 20s and early 30s was Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a non-Jewish Russian poet born in 1932. On September 19, 1961, he published “Babi Yar,” which declared, “No monument stands over Babi Yar.” This was the first time since the death of Stalin a writer risked referring to a subject viewed as “nearly completely taboo.” This “transformative” poem was seen as a protest against the lack of a monument, and the continuing efforts to flood the place were “fraught with strong antisemitic underpinnings.”
In 1962, Russian composer and pianist Dmitri Shostakovich set the poem to music as part of the Thirteenth Symphony, subtitled “Babi Yar.”
International response to Yevtushenko’s poem led to the “ravine being remembered as a site standing for two contrasting vectors: the duty never to forget and the tendency of neglect and chronic amnesia.”
A Final Note
In this extremely significant work, Dr. Pilnik uses his command of languages, literature, poetry, politics and music to provide a comprehensive background to understand how Babi Yar emerged from obscurity to become a symbol of the Jewish experience in Russia during the period of the czars and the Shoah. As Pilnik explains, “If I were to look for a word, place, concept, and metaphor, or space” that encapsulates “the Holocaust in the Soviet Union … the ravine would be the first one that comes to mind.”
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