The Obfuscation of Baby Yar
Stephen D. Smith
2011.09.16
2011.09.16
BLOG.STEPHENDSMITH.ORG: The Obfuscation of Babi Yar
http://blog.stephendsmith.org/2011/09/16/the-ongoing-tragedy-of-babi-yar.aspx
BLOG.STEPHENDSMITH.ORG: The Obfuscation of Babi Yar The Obfuscation of Babi Yar I had preconceptions about Babi Yar.
Over the years I have seen historical photographs of the ravine just outside the city of Kiev where 33,771 Jews were murdered in two days 29-30 September 70 years ago in 1941. In the photographs it has steep slopes, piles of corpses lying at the base and strewn across the bottom of the ravine. It looks lonely, deserted, a lifeless people-less void. And so I anticipated the lonely sojourn from a gravel car park into a forest somewhere to the edge of the ravine, where only the sound of the wind and the flap of a gang of black crows would break the silence. Somehow I imagined myself taking in the depth of the ravine and trying to contemplate what nearly 34,000 Jewish corpses - and maybe 100,000 bodies in total once the Nazis had done their work there looked like, as they filled a silent space marking their final resting place.
As the car pulled up outside the metro station on a dual-carriagway road right in the middle of a built-up suburb, I wrongly assumed we were looking for fuel or an ATM. When I discovered we were at Babi Yar, parked on what was the very site of the ravine, it took me a while to adjust. I was still looking for the ravine - which at its deepest was previously 50m deep. But there was not so much as a slope. It had been completely filled in and built over.
To say that the current site of Babi Yar bears no resemblance to the original place is hardly describes the transformation. It has been completely erased from the landscape. There is no Babi Yar, or at least Babi Yar has become a completely different place.
But don't for a second think that its significance has been forgotten. On the contrary, one of the main problems with what is left is that it is heavily loaded with significance for many groups.
Babi Yar was the site of arguably the quickest and most effective genocidal massacre of the Holocaust. Brutal shooting for two days wiped out 33,771 Jews from Kiev, that's significantly faster killing than the gas chambers of Auschwitz ever achieved, even at their height of operatio, albeit for two days only. It was a bloodbath of unparalled proportions. It was a matter of how early it took place in 1941, its scale, its speed, its completeness.
But Jews were not the only victims of Babi Yar. In fact they were the minority by the time the Nazis had completed their work in Kiev. Every group possible that got in their way or did not conform were taken there and shot. Over 60,000 victims from Russian prisoners of war, to Gypsies, communist leaders and activists were mudered there.
And so many groups have their memory to uphold there - and over an extended period of 50years various monuments have been erected. Add to that the complicating factor of the Soviet narrative of the Second World War and the counter histories that are still in a wrangling battle, the monumental landscape is a startling insight into the landscape of public memory in Ukraine. It includes obfuscation and absence, denial and education, it includes old Soviet period monstrosity and more recent sentimentality, all tucked away in corners of the public park which covers much of the territory.
I don't blame the mothers with their strollers, or the walkers with their dogs, why wouldn't they want to be in the Babi Yar park if it is made available to them? But the fact that the authorities knowingly dug through the remains of innocent lives to build the metro station is unforgivable, particularly as today you can catch the train without the slightest clue that the escalator takes you down to an underground platform deep in the earth, where those corpses had once clumsily rolled to their deaths.
It is without doubt the most hideous and one of the most complicated site of the Holocaust, and places a very real challenge to us. Because whatever Babi Yar once was, it is what it will become that will test us and judge us. Posted by Stephen D Smith at 9/16/2011 5:25 AM
Over the years I have seen historical photographs of the ravine just outside the city of Kiev where 33,771 Jews were murdered in two days 29-30 September 70 years ago in 1941. In the photographs it has steep slopes, piles of corpses lying at the base and strewn across the bottom of the ravine. It looks lonely, deserted, a lifeless people-less void. And so I anticipated the lonely sojourn from a gravel car park into a forest somewhere to the edge of the ravine, where only the sound of the wind and the flap of a gang of black crows would break the silence. Somehow I imagined myself taking in the depth of the ravine and trying to contemplate what nearly 34,000 Jewish corpses - and maybe 100,000 bodies in total once the Nazis had done their work there looked like, as they filled a silent space marking their final resting place.
As the car pulled up outside the metro station on a dual-carriagway road right in the middle of a built-up suburb, I wrongly assumed we were looking for fuel or an ATM. When I discovered we were at Babi Yar, parked on what was the very site of the ravine, it took me a while to adjust. I was still looking for the ravine - which at its deepest was previously 50m deep. But there was not so much as a slope. It had been completely filled in and built over.
To say that the current site of Babi Yar bears no resemblance to the original place is hardly describes the transformation. It has been completely erased from the landscape. There is no Babi Yar, or at least Babi Yar has become a completely different place.
But don't for a second think that its significance has been forgotten. On the contrary, one of the main problems with what is left is that it is heavily loaded with significance for many groups.
Babi Yar was the site of arguably the quickest and most effective genocidal massacre of the Holocaust. Brutal shooting for two days wiped out 33,771 Jews from Kiev, that's significantly faster killing than the gas chambers of Auschwitz ever achieved, even at their height of operatio, albeit for two days only. It was a bloodbath of unparalled proportions. It was a matter of how early it took place in 1941, its scale, its speed, its completeness.
But Jews were not the only victims of Babi Yar. In fact they were the minority by the time the Nazis had completed their work in Kiev. Every group possible that got in their way or did not conform were taken there and shot. Over 60,000 victims from Russian prisoners of war, to Gypsies, communist leaders and activists were mudered there.
And so many groups have their memory to uphold there - and over an extended period of 50years various monuments have been erected. Add to that the complicating factor of the Soviet narrative of the Second World War and the counter histories that are still in a wrangling battle, the monumental landscape is a startling insight into the landscape of public memory in Ukraine. It includes obfuscation and absence, denial and education, it includes old Soviet period monstrosity and more recent sentimentality, all tucked away in corners of the public park which covers much of the territory.
I don't blame the mothers with their strollers, or the walkers with their dogs, why wouldn't they want to be in the Babi Yar park if it is made available to them? But the fact that the authorities knowingly dug through the remains of innocent lives to build the metro station is unforgivable, particularly as today you can catch the train without the slightest clue that the escalator takes you down to an underground platform deep in the earth, where those corpses had once clumsily rolled to their deaths.
It is without doubt the most hideous and one of the most complicated site of the Holocaust, and places a very real challenge to us. Because whatever Babi Yar once was, it is what it will become that will test us and judge us. Posted by Stephen D Smith at 9/16/2011 5:25 AM