Plan to build community center near Babyn Yar causes dissension within Jewish community (09/28/03)

Plan to build community center near Babyn Yar causes dissension within Jewish community

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - A plan to build a Jewish community center at the edge of Babyn Yar has caused dissension among Jewish leaders in Kyiv and resulted in its postponement by the U.S.-based Jewish organization that will coordinate the project, as it awaits a community consensus.

The disagreements, which have taken place over the course of a year and a half, revolve around the question of whether it is appropriate to build a multi-million dollar community center - which originally was to include a theater and recreational facilities - on what could be the burial ground of Ukrainian Jews and others murdered during the German Nazi occupation.

Certain social activists from the wider Ukrainian community have also expressed dissatisfaction that the memorial and museum would be dedicated exclusively to the memory of massacred Jews and ignore the deaths of Ukrainians and other nationalities who also were murdered in large numbers.

Caught in the middle is the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which has coordinated the construction of more than 170 Jewish community centers in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The Kyiv project, which is proceeding with financing from two Jewish-based philanthropic organizations, was to include a research institute, a museum and a memorial to the victims, as well as the community center, before some in the Kyiv Jewish community raised concerns over desecration of the Babyn Yar site.

"The donors are interested in a Jewish community center for Kyiv, not in a particular site," explained Amir Shaviv, spokesman for the JDC in New York.

The disagreements began in the spring of 2002, when the JDC announced a plan to utilize money provided by the Weinberg Foundation and the Shusterman Foundation to build community centers in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kyiv. Leaders of the Kyiv Jewish community proposed the now contentious site for Kyiv: a plot of land that was generally considered then to be immediately adjacent to Babyn Yar and not part of the killing fields.

"The Jews locally thought it would be a vivid statement near the place where the plan to eradicate the Jews of Ukraine took place," explained Mr. Shaviv in an interview with The Weekly.

What no one could ascertain for certain at the time, although there had been speculation, was whether the land had originally been a part of Babyn Yar 1941-1943, the period during which Nazi occupying forces used the ravine located in the northern part of Kyiv as an extermination site. It is estimated that in a two-day period, September 29-30, some 3,000 Jews were executed. By the end of the German occupation of Ukraine around 150,000 Jews, Ukrainians and Gypsies, as well as members of other national minorities, had gone to their graves and were buried in the ravine.

Today, 80,000 Jewish Ukrainians live in Kyiv. They have slowly rebuilt their lives and their community in the last decade after suffering the Holocaust of World War II, which was followed by 46 years of Soviet discrimination and persecution. The Jewish community, free from the USSR's state-sponsored anti-Semitic policies, has rebuilt its synagogues and added five Jewish schools serving 3,000 children as well as a half dozen community centers.

Those from the Jewish community who came forth to oppose the site selected for what would be the newest and largest community center - led by Josef Zissels, a former Soviet dissident who now heads the Va'ad organization - referred to historic maps which showed that the selected site was within the area of the killing fields. However, no one could say for sure whether blood was actually shed at the site. A preliminary dig found no human remains.

That of itself did not prove much, explained Mr. Zissels. The respected community activist who has on several occasions crossed paths and words with such luminaries of the Ukrainian Jewish community as Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Yakiv Dov Bleich, Oleksander Feldman, president of the Jewish Foundation of Ukraine and Vadym Rabinovich, a prominent Jewish businessman, said he has yet to see absolute proof that the site was not the burial ground for some of the victims. "Much has changed in the area, including the fact that in the early 1960s a huge flood and mudslide upturned much of the earth here and restructured the landscape," said Mr. Zissels. "What do we do if we find bones after we have built the community center?"

Rabbi Bleich said he acknowledged the concerns that had been raised, and that he and the other community leaders had tried to meet halfway those opposed to the project.

"You can't have a traditional Jewish community center in such a place," explained Rabbi Bleich. "A regular JCC in the States may have a swimming pool, an entertainment area, a stage. Here that tradition does not exist and after certain people said we can't have that at Babyn Yar, we removed all the entertainment stuff."

Ukraine's top Jewish religious leader also noted that the name was changed from simply the "Heritage Community Center" to the "Heritage Memorial Community Center."

He said it was after that issue seemingly had been resolved that the next crisis arose: concerns over the actual geographic location of Babyn Yar. Finally, to resolve the matter once and for all, experts were contracted to make sure the chosen territory had not been a cemetery, as some were suddenly saying, and a pre-dig was done to determine that no bones were located beneath the soil.

The results of excavations and aerial photography gave the project's boosters a high degree of confidence that no bodily remains lay below the site of the proposed community center, explained Rabbi Bleich. However, to be on the safe side, the experts suggested that the design include no basement and that no deep digging take place.

Obviously exasperated by the problems, the religious leader said that, while money was expended to quiet the dissenting voices, he nonetheless questioned their sincerity.

"Where were all the people who are opposed to the Babyn Yar project when the gas stations were being put up, when the metro (subway) station was being built and bones were being carted away by the truckload," asked Rabbi Bleich, who was referring to the considerable development that has taken place on some of the key sites of the Babyn Yar tragedy - much of it during the Soviet era but some of it in the last decade, after Ukrainian independence, as well.

Mr. Zissels, who said his criticism of the project had made him subject to an official "shunning" in which the other Jewish leaders had ordered that no one in the community cooperate with him, remains convinced that the project is going forward for commercial purposes and will desecrate the soil and dishonor the memory of the Jews killed at Babyn Yar.

He said that, regardless of what the JDC is now saying, originally it chose the site on its own but is now backtracking because it has felt heated criticism over its selection. "Amos Avhar chose the site. He is a high-ranking member of the [JDC]. It was his idea," explained Mr. Zissels. While it now realizes its mistake, explained Mr. Zissels, the Joint Distribution Committee is finding it difficult to back down without losing face.

The former Soviet dissident said the U.S.-based organization, commonly known as the "Joint," was given nine sites to choose from and that Mr. Avhar chose the one that had been thought to stand alongside Babyn Yar.

"He can't be blamed because he didn't properly understand what he had chosen," explained Mr. Zissels also noted that he and his supporters were not against a community center in general but opposed only the selected site.

He voiced dissatisfaction, however, with the community center's design, accusing the project directors of making cosmetic changes to stifle criticism, such as renaming the theater hall a conference center, and giving too little space for the museum.

Mr. Zissels also noted that the Jewish community had opened itself up to criticism by not inviting the Ukrainian community at large and those ethnic minorities that also had felt the Nazi terror at Babyn Yar to contribute to the memorial museum.

"We are again opening ourselves up to anti-Semitism," explained Mr. Zissels.

Several Jewish and non-Jewish political leaders in Ukraine had announced in April 2003 the formation of a citizens committee "in the memory of Babyn Yar victims," which was co-chaired by Ivan Dzyuba, a former minister of culture of Ukraine, history scholar Dr. Myroslav Popovych, social activist Semen Gluzman and Leonid Finberg, the director of the Institute of Jewish Studies in Kyiv. The group called for a single national memorial to the victims of Babyn Yar to avoid the development of several separate projects that would not do proper justice to the victims.

Members of the organization, which included representatives of 12 national communities, including Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, Tatars, Estonians, Lithuanians and Roma (Gypsies), signed a letter addressed to President Leonid Kuchma and the Ukrainian government expressing their opposition to the JDC project.

Mr. Finberg, who is well-respected in Jewish and Ukrainian circles, said the construction of the center would do harm because it would again raise resentment against the community, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report.

"Why build a Jewish community center in this place and create a potential conflict for all these groups, which consider themselves to be descendants of Babyn Yar?" he asked.

Mr. Zissels, who also signed the letter to President Kuchma, noted that during the press conference participants described the exclusively Jewish character of the museum as an offense to other nationalities victimized at Babyn Yar in 1941-1943.

Rabbi Bleich expressed less concern over how other nationalities would perceive the community center. However, he emphasized that he had no desire to oppose the erection of memorials or the building of museums on the site by other nationalities and invited them to do so. However, he also noted that when people such as Mr. Zissels went outside the Jewish community to criticize it and bring pressure to bear on it, they were in fact inflaming dormant anti-Semitic feelings.

Rabbi Bleich, who said that in the last days he was again in contact with Mr. Zissels and that relations had been repaired, emphasized that the Jewish community in Kyiv was not divided. Certain leaders were merely in disagreement, he added.

"I don't think a rift exists within the community. These are just certain individuals within the community who have rallied some to their side," said the religious leader.

Rabbi Bleich explained that separating the museum and memorial from the community center, as Mr. Zissels was demanding, while appeasing the opposition, would not ensure that a memorial center would eventually be built because it would dramatically change the circumstances.

"The money that was gathered was for a community center and that is where the problems arise. It could be separated, but then it wouldn't be the memorial center that everybody has envisioned," explained Rabbi Bleich. "It is up to the JDC to decide. It is still up in the air. They are ultimately the ones that have to do the soul-searching."

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