Ukrainian Pres Zelenskyy commemorates Babyn Yar massacre, urges action against rising antisemitism

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the country’s leading rabbis commemorated the Babyn Yar massacre victims on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday.

Over 33,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators during a two-day massacre on Sept. 29–30, 1941, in the Babyn Yar ravine outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Many of the victims were women, children and the elderly.

“In this place, tens of thousands of Jews were murdered, as part of the Holocaust of European Jewry in which 6 million Jews were slaughtered,” Zelenskyy said.

“The world has a duty to remember the promise of ‘Never Again’ and to uphold it. These are not empty words – when antisemitism is spreading across the world, we must ensure that this promise is truly kept. We must act against antisemitism,” the Ukrainian president, who is Jewish, stressed.

The Babyn Yar massacre is widely recognized as one of the bloodiest massacres of the Holocaust, outside of the extermination camps. 

Rabbi Meir Stambler, the head of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, and Rabbi Moshe Azman of Kyiv’s Brodsky Synagogue flanked Zelenskyy during the event. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and around 30 foreign ambassadors also attended the commemoration event at Babyn Yar. 

Last year, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) read out the names of over 1,000 victims during a ceremony marking the 84th anniversary of the Nazi atrocity. 

“The breakthrough, made possible through unprecedented archival access and large-scale digitization despite the ongoing war, sheds new light on one of the Holocaust’s worst single atrocities – the murder of 33,771 Jews over two days in September 1941, the start of the ‘Holocaust by Bullets,'" the BYHMC said in an official statement. 

Former Israeli Minister of Interior Natan Sharansky, born in Ukraine, emphasized the importance of remembering during a separate memorial ceremony in Jerusalem. 

“Memory is a moral weapon against denial, oblivion and distortion,” Sharansky told the audience in Jerusalem.

“Every name we succeed in restoring contributes to Holocaust commemoration and advances justice and dignity for its victims. There is a blatant attempt to undermine history and even erase it. Precisely in times of war, the obligation to defend the truth is doubled,” he said.

Sharansky, who survived Soviet antisemitic persecution, reminded the audience that international efforts to demonize Jews by equating the Jewish state with Nazi Germany preceded the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack in 2023. 

“Using the Holocaust against Jews was not born today,” Sharansky said. “A professor in Columbia University and some others, even 20 years ago, were saying that what Nazis did to Jews, that’s what Jews do today to Palestinians. That’s the highest moment of anti-Semitism. That’s exactly what anti-Semites all the time say,” he explained. 

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Israel has continued to express support for the Ukrainian people while maintaining its diplomatic ties with Moscow.