Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center


Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center is an educational institution that documents, explains and commemorates the Babi Yar shootings of September 1941 and aims to broaden and sustain the memory of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, taking into account geopolitical changes during the 20th century. In 2016 the discussion of the Memorial project began. The Memorial Center is planned to be created in Kyiv, Ukraine, by 2023.

Babi Yar

is one of the most famous places of memory associated with human tragedy. During the Second World War it was the place of the Nazi genocide. On September 29-30, more Jews were slaughtered in two days than in any other single German massacre – the Nazis brutally killed 33,771 Jews. In total, from September 29, 1941 till October 1943, the Nazi occupation authorities killed nearly 100,000 people in and near the Babi Yar ravine.

History

On September 29, 2016, on the 75th anniversary of one of the most notorious atrocities of the Second World War, members of a broad international coalition gathered in Kyiv to announce their commitment to create a new memorial and educational center in Ukraine. Creation of the Memorial was supported by the city authorities and President Petro Poroshenko.
On March 19, 2017, the Supervisory Board of the Memorial was founded. The Supervisory Board is headed by the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky and consists of philanthropists German Khan, Mikhail Fridman, Victor Pinchuk, and Pavel Fuks, the chief rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine Yakov Dov Bleich, artist Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, world heavyweight champion Volodymyr Klitschko, the former Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova, former President of Poland Alexander Kwasniewski, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany Joschka Fischer.