Turning the pages back... July 6, 1980 (07/01/01)

Turning the pages back...

July 6, 1980

A "News and Views" item about a proposed memorial to the victims of Babyn Yar appeared on the pages of The Weekly on July 6, 1980. Following are excerpts from the article, written by Marie Halun Bloch.

In 1941-1943, the Wehrmacht seized Kyiv, rounded nearly 100,000 Jewish men, women, children and marched them off to a ravine called Babyn Yar, on the outskirts of the capital and shot them. During its two-year occupation of Kyiv, the SS murdered nearly as many non-Jewish citizens. The great majority of these victims were Ukrainians - some 70,000, but many Russians, Belarusians and Gypsies were also murdered.

Almost 30 years later in 1970, a group of Jewish men and women in Denver projected a plan for a memorial to the Jewish victims of Babyn Yar in the form of a public park to be dedicated to their memory. Denver city authorities allocated 27 acres of land to the project in the southeastern part of the city that in their contour resembled the real Babyn Yar in Kyiv. At a ceremony on September 29, 1978, with the participation of numerous federal, state and city officials as well as representatives of various Jewish organizations, the land was dedicated. Members of the Ukrainian community were not invited.

Perturbed by the fact that the thousands of Ukrainians and others who fell victim at Babyn Yar are not even mentioned in the proposed plaque inscriptions, and by other historical inaccuracies, local members of the UCCA formed the Babyn Yar Committee, headed by Ivan Stebelsky, to deal with the matter. The committee raised the following points: that Ukrainians and others who perished at Babyn Yar be specifically named in the text of the inscriptions that the Ukrainian name "Babyn Yar" be used as the name of the park, since the original Babyn Yar is in the capital of Ukraine; if inscriptions are written in Hebrew, in addition to English, they should also be written in Ukrainian.

* * *

Five years after the land was granted for the project, the park was dedicated on October 2, 1983, at an assembly of 300 Ukrainians, Jews and others.

Sources: "Project for Babyn Yar park must not ignore Ukrainian victims," by Marie Halun Bloch, The Ukrainian Weekly, Sunday, July 6, 1980; "Babi Yar Park dedicated; Grigorenko is keynote speaker," by Marie Halun Bloch, The Ukrainian Weekly, October 16, 1983.

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