It may be Sunday but I'm still thinking about Saturday

As Lev wrote, our first full day in Kyiv was busy and covered a lot of historical, emotional, and cultural territory. I promised to write a bit about our visit to the killing ground known historically to Jews as Babi Yar (from the Russian) but now known officially as Babyn Yar in Ukrainian.

A map of the grounds. Sorry, it's all in Ukrainian

I first read about Babyn Yar when I was about 20 years old through the moving and evocative poem by the Soviet-Russian writer Yevgeny Yevtushenko. It memorialized the 33,711 Jews who were forcibly brought to the ravine in Kyiv, and then were brutally shot and killed on Yom Kippur between 29 and 30 September 1941. It was the largest mass slaughter of Jews in Ukraine at that point of the war but sadly would not be the last.
 
But Jews weren't the only ones who died at Babyn Yar. The Nazi's were equal opportunity murderers; there wasn't a minority (or majority) that they didn't hate. So approximately 100,000 and 150,000 Ukrainian nationalists, Roma, gays, and Soviet POW's also died there in the months after the murder of the Jewish population.

Babyn Yar is quite a large area covered by lawn, wild grasses, and many poplar and birch trees. The sound of the wind in the trees is beautiful and calming.

Not visible: The millions of little poplar seeds floating through the air. Apparently, female poplars douse the whole city with them.

There are a variety of monuments to the dead spread out over the grounds. We didn't see the giant menorah as it was in a different place but we did see a giant sculpture, put up by the Soviet government, to honour the small number of communists who died there.

And boy is it ugly. It might be hard to discern what it's supposed to be from this distance but, believe me, even up close it's a mess.

 There was also a permanent monument in the form of a large cross in memory of the Ukrainian nationalist dead.

While it is big, the perspective isn't doing the Jewish monument any favours.

 For the Jewish community, there was a small temporary trilingual (English, Hebrew, Ukrainian) monument put up by the Ukrainian government in 2001. I was disappointed that it was so small, but apparently I can blame the Jewish community for the lack of a permanent monument. Apparently, one European Jewish group wanted to build a community centre (which in reality would have been a business centre) on the spot! So there is no monument because they haven't been able to agree on something suitable. Get two Jews together and you'll have three opinions!
 

 Also distressing were the factories and administrative buildings built on top of Ukrainian and Jewish graves by the Soviets. In 1973, a giant TV tower was erected which still overshadows the memorial site. Now abandoned, it still serves as a reminder of how memory must be protected.

Build giant useless tower over the mass-graves of the victims of war crimes? Stay classy, Soviet Union, stay classy.

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We left Babyn Yar for a much more enjoyable entertainment in the evening, which took place in St. Sophia square. (Lev's note: With the sun setting behind the stage, it was beautiful to see the light play on the bell tower)

Big thanks to Myron and family for letting us know about this. We had a great time!

It was a classical music concert (that started almost 30 minutes late), but the square was packed with chairs and was standing room only for the unfortunate late-comers. There were a lot of opera performances including a group known as "The Three Basses", who did some comedic takes on opera. It was very Ukrainian humour.

Also there was a fire on a nearby street but the concert continued nonetheless.

The night ended with a laser light show using the stage and bell-tower as a screen. It told of the founding of Kyiv using a neat stylized cartoon style. Very cool.

Jewish Kyiv. No seriously, Jewish Kyiv projected on the side of a monastery belltower.

With that, we ended our Saturday and looked forward to Sunday.