1983: A LOOK BACK

Babyn Yar memorial park

The long-awaited dedication of a memorial park in Denver dedicated to the victims murdered by the Nazis at Babyn Yar near Kiev took place on October 2. The 27-acre park, set aside as a memorial to the some 200,000 Jews, Ukrainians and others massacred at Babyn Yar in 1941, was the culmination of a three-year joint effort by Denver's Jewish and Ukrainian communities, a collaboration that overcame some early misunderstandings.

When the Babi Yar Foundation first proposed the park project in 1971, no mention was made of the 70,000 Ukrainians killed at the ravine or other non-Jews. Moreover, a proposed inscription actually implicated Ukrainians in the killings. In 1980, the Ukrainian Babyn Yar Committee, headed by Ivan Stebelsky, which had been pushing for recognition of Ukrainians murdered at the ravine, joined the foundation in a common effort after foundation officials agreed to commemorate non-Jewish victims.

The gateway to the park is formed by a pair of huge granite monoliths. An inscription honors the memory of the victims. It also has brief inscriptions in Hebrew and Ukrainian.

The keynote speaker at the dedication was former Ukrainian dissident and Red Army general Petro Grigorenko, who reviewed some historical events that served to separate the two peoples - Ukrainians and Jews - and remarked on the fact that Jews played a part in the Ukrainian republic during the war for independence. He emphasized that cooperation between Ukrainian and Jewish dissidents in the USSR is reflected in the common memorial to two peoples fighting a common enemy.

The display of Ukrainian-Jewish cooperation in the actualization of the memorial park is encouraging, but not to the Soviets. When it became clear that Ukrainians and Jews were willing and able to work together on the project, Soviet newspapers began writing slanderous articles accusing Mr. Stebelsky of collaborating with the Nazis during World War II. Mr. Stebelsky said the charges were ridiculous, and that they did not hamper his committee's efforts. In fact, he said Soviet reaction proved that the Kremlin fears the prospect of wide-scale Ukrainian-Jewish cooperation.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 25, 1983, No. 52, Vol. LI

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