Exhibition shocks visitors with many photographs, guns and video accounts of more than 2,000 witnesses to Holocaust
Nearly 70 years after the end of World War II, it would seem there is little new that anyone could say about the Holocaust. But that would be wrong.
As Ukraine prepares to commemorate the 70-year-anniversary of the tragedy at Babi Yar, an extraordinary and painful exhibit has opened at Kyiv’s Ukrainian House. It explores the lesser-known story of the Holocaust, and the one that happened right here at home.
“Shoah by Bullets: Mass Shootings of Jews in Ukraine in 1941-1944” is a multi-media exhibit that tells the story of more than 1.5 million Jews who lost their lives not in Europe’s more widely-known Nazi concentration camps, but in Ukraine.
Before camps like Auschwitz and Sobibor became killing factories, a staggering number of Ukraine’s Jews were taken to the foot of a ravine or to an open field – often not far from their homes – and shot dead.
Only now is their story, as well as the places of their death, becoming more widely known.
The exhibit, shown in Ukraine for the first time, is the outgrowth of work done by Father Patrick Desbois, a French Catholic priest. Since 2001, he has identified undiscovered mass graves of Jews killed in the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Before camps like Auschwitz and Sobibor became killing factories, a staggering number of Ukraine’s Jews were taken to the foot of a ravine or to an open field – often not far from their homes – and shot dead. Only now is their story, as well as the places of their death, becoming more widely known.
Beginning with Ukraine, he has expanded his work to other countries, including Belarus, Russia, and even Poland, which before World War II was home to more than three million Jews.
Ukraine’s Babi Yar is perhaps the most recognized example of the Holocaust by bullets. In a two-day period, from Sept. 29-30, 1941, Nazis, who occupied Kyiv 10 days previously, massacred 33,771 Jews in this ravine situated not far from the city center.
Other killings took place there until the war’s end, with Gypsies and Soviet war prisoners also executed.
The exhibit includes Babi Yar, but expands the scope, showing how widespread was this chapter of the Holocaust.
Set up thematically, it provides the visitor with an overview of the history that led to the Holocaust in Ukraine, who its executors were, and pinpoints many of the places of death.
Prominent are terminals where one can sit and listen to testimonies of those who witnessed the shootings – transcripts run along the bottom of the screen – as well the few individuals who survived the slaughter. In their efficiency, the Nazis were able to execute a village’s entire Jewish population in a matter of hours.
To date, more than 2,000 witnesses to the killings have been interviewed by teams from Desbois’ Paris-based foundation, Yahad-In Unum, established in 2004. Some of those interviews came out in an award-winning book by Desbois titled “Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews.” The Ukrainian-language version has just been published by Kyiv’s “Duh I Litera” publishing house.
Of the testimonies at the exhibit, one of the most gripping accounts comes from Nina Rouvimivna. She was five when she was arrested with other Jews in Beligirsk, the Crimea, and was the only person to survive the mass execution.
Hanna C. from Romanivka remembers how children were thrown into killing pits still alive. In bits of a transcript displayed on a board, Myron E., a survivor from Mykolaiv recalls how 64,000 Jews were shot over a period of three years at a camp that once had been a collective farm. Jews had been deported there from Besarabia and Odesa.
The color photographs taken at Babi Yar have an immediacy about them that for all their horror can sometimes be missing in black and white stills.
Yahad-In Unum has also gathered ballistic evidence over the years. On display are items used in death, including an MG-34 machine gun and respective ammunition bands. While the exhibit is text heavy, visitors will be both shocked and drawn in by the many photographs displayed on walls and in notebooks located throughout the exhibition hall.
Of particular interest may be a set of photographs taken by Johannes Hahle, a military photographer with the German Propaganda-Kompanie 637 of the 6th Army, which operated in Ukraine in 1941.
The color photographs taken at Babi Yar have an immediacy about them that for all their horror can sometimes be missing in black and white stills. The red, blue and green of Kyiv streets and the sandy hue of its now famous ravine, set as the backdrop for corpses enveloped in a multitude of colors, are an unsettling reminder that this could have happened now.
A few household items – a glass bottle with a Star of David etched into it, a lamp stand with Grandmother written in Russian and Hebrew – are a subtle reminder of the lives that were lost.
Even though the exhibit is unsettling, it is an important addition to the study of the Holocaust, particularly for a younger generation of Ukrainians who are looking at their country’s history anew. To help navigate this chapter of Ukraine’s often turbulent history, volunteers affiliated with the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies are on hand to give individual tours and answer questions.
The exhibit was organized by The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Memorial de la Shoah and Yahad-In Unum in partnership with the embassies of France, Israel and the U.S., among others. It was previously shown in Brussels, New York and other cities.
Staff writer Natalia A. Feduschak can be reached at [email protected]
