EDITORIAL: Babyn Yar and the "others" (10/07/01)

EDITORIAL

Babyn Yar and the "others"

Last week Ukraine marked the 60th anniversary of the Nazi massacre at Babyn Yar [the name means grandmother's ravine]. It was at that site, then located on Kyiv's outskirts, that the Nazis in 1941 perpetrated a most gruesome slaughter as part of Hitler's "Final Solution." The anniversary of this genocidal act was marked not only in Kyiv, where Ukrainian officials, Jewish leaders and foreign diplomats gathered, but also nationwide, with the news media offering special reports on this tragic chapter of history.

There was reaction also in Washington on the occasion of the 60th anniversary. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher issued a brief statement to the press in which he noted: "During a two-day period in 1941, Nazi soldiers killed over 33,000 people, most of them Jews, from the region in and around occupied Kiev [sic], then part of Soviet Ukraine. Through the last year of World War II, the ultimate toll of those murdered, including Jews, Roma, homosexuals and others, is believed to have reached 100,000."

"Others," the statement said. "Others."

The story of Babyn Yar is all about "others" - the "others" whom the Nazis wanted to exterminate, the "others" whom the Soviets wanted to scorn. Now the "others" are the tens of thousands ignored, thanks to unfortunate statements like our State Department's.

Ten years ago, on September 29, 1991, newly independent Ukraine remembered the horror of Babyn Yar with a weeklong series of commemorations that ended 50 years of official Soviet silence on the Nazis' mass killings of Jews, Ukrainians and various citizens of what was then the USSR. For decades, you see, official Soviet propaganda and officially sanctioned anti-Semitism would not allow the truth to be told. Even after a monument was erected at the site in 1976, the memorial plaque noted only that residents of Kyiv and prisoners of war had been executed there by fascists; the monument itself did not depict Jewish victims.

A new phase in Ukrainian-Jewish relations began in 1991. Fifty years after the first day of mass shootings in the ravine, thousands gathered near a menorah erected in memory of Babyn Yar's Jewish victims - the primary victims of that Nazi massacre. Among the mourners were official delegations from the U.S., Israel, Germany and Ukraine, as well as survivors and witnesses. As we noted in our editorial, "Babyn Yar: a shared tragedy," the solemn events recalled all the massacre victims.

The editorial cited an official German report which noted that all the Jews of Kyiv were ordered to appear on Monday, September 29, 1941, on the outskirts of the city. There, during a 36-hour period, Einsatzgruppe C, Sonderkommando 4A murdered 33,771 Jews. These children, women and men were stripped naked, shot and pushed into a ravine.

During the next two years - until the German retreat from Kyiv - an additional 170,000 persons were massacred at the ravine. Ultimately, Babyn Yar became a mass grave for 100,000 Jews, 70,000 to 80,000 Ukrainians, plus another 30,000 persons, among them Russians, Poles, Gypsies, prisoners of war, partisans and civilians. Among the Ukrainian victims were Kyiv Mayor Oleksa Bahaziy, poetess Olena Teliha and thousands who resisted the Nazi occupation.

Those were the "others" the State Department chose not to mention 60 years later.

On this anniversary of the atrocities at Babyn Yar, we can only hope that a part of this horrific episode's legacy will be to do away with the notion of "others" - others "less human," others "less worthy," others "less significant"...

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