https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-holocaust-disneyland-11594336467?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_4&cx_artPos=3#cxrecs_s
The territory of Ukraine was the site of countless horrors committed against the Jewish people under Nazi occupation. Yet the resource-strapped country lacks a major museum and memorial dedicated to the Holocaust. While an international initiative to create one began in 2016, the ambitious project is in disarray, with one critic calling it “Holocaust Disneyland.”
For centuries Ukraine has constituted the historical homeland for much of European Jewry, and more than half of American Jews have roots in the region. An estimated 1.5 million Jews were killed on its territory during the “Holocaust by bullets,” with some 90% of the killings carried out directly by German forces. Babyn Yar—a ravine outside of Kyiv, where some 34,000 Jews were rounded up and shot Sept. 29-30, 1941—has come to symbolize the killing fields across Eastern Europe.
The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center initiative, launched in 2016, likely will be the last major Holocaust memorial built during the lifetimes of survivors. Costs are projected to surpass $100 million. Most funding has come from four Jewish billionaires, some of whose families perished at Babyn Yar. Yet three of the billionaires are Russian citizens. The leading role played by Russians has been controversial, given that the country has occupied and annexed swaths of Ukrainian territory and waged a war that has cost at least 14,000 Ukrainian lives since 2014.
