Basic Historical Narrative of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center
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BASIC HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF THE BABYN YAR HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL CENTER October 2018 Team of authors Karel Berkhoff (chair) Anna Abakunova Martin Dean Christoph Dieckmann Diana Dumitru Kiril Feferman Vladyslav Hrynevych Victoria Khiterer Alexander Kruglov Dieter Pohl Babette Quinkert Yuri Radchenko Irina Rebrova Kai Struve Dmitrii Titarenko Andrej Umansky © 2018 Charity organization “Charity Fund Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial” 03150, Kyiv, Ukraine t: +38 044 233 66 17 1 100A, Velyka Vasylkivska, off.901-90 babynyar.org [email protected] Reviewers Ilya Altman Omer Bartov Mykola Borovyk Oleg Budnitskii Barbara Engelking Gelinada Grinchenko John-Paul Himka Wendy Lower Ivan Patryliak Antony Polonsky Vladimir Solonari Oleg Surovtsev Jeffrey Veidlinger Arkadi Zeltser Not all passages necessarily express the views of all the reviewers. Editors of the Ukrainian version Karel Berkhoff Andrii Rukkas 03150, Kyiv, Ukraine t: +38 044 233 66 17 2 100A, Velyka Vasylkivska, off.901-90 babynyar.org [email protected] CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 Ten questions and answers about the Basic Historical Narrative. 1 JEWS IN EASTERN EUROPE 17 The lives led before the Holocaust, and largely lost in it. 2 THE ROAD TOWARD NAZI MASS MURDER 43 Nazi Germany’s anti-Jewish measures in Germany and Europe. 3 KYIV AND BABYN YAR BEFORE AND DURING THE HOLOCAUST 52 Jewish life in the city in the decades prior to the German occupation of 1941-43; the mass murder of Kyiv’s Jews and of other Kyivans. 4 THE HOLOCAUST IN EASTERN EUROPE 87 The bigger picture – German policies and structures of extermination, including the methods used in specific historic regions within and beyond Ukraine’s borders. 5 RESPONSES BY JEWS AND AID TO JEWS BY OTHERS 155 The perspective of the victims and the varying ways in which they responded, as well as the phenomenon of aid by non-Jews. 6 THE HOLOCAUST BEYOND EASTERN EUROPE 178 A look beyond BYHMC’s geographic focus. 7 NON-JEWISH VICTIMS 190 The killings by Nazi Germany of other victim groups, in a largely deliberate process, inextricably interwoven with the Holocaust (whereby some of the victim groups included Jews). 03150, Kyiv, Ukraine t: +38 044 233 66 17 3 100A, Velyka Vasylkivska, off.901-90 babynyar.org [email protected] 8 BABYN YAR, PROSECUTION, OBLIVION, MEMORY 2228 The ways in which the Holocaust was forcibly ignored as well as remembered in Kyiv, Eastern Europe, and the World, and the perpetrators prosecuted. The Holocaust as a challenge. 03150, Kyiv, Ukraine t: +38 044 233 66 17 4 100A, Velyka Vasylkivska, off.901-90 babynyar.org [email protected] INTRODUCTION 1/ What is the place of Babyn Yar within the Holocaust? In September 1941, for the very first time in history, a metropolitan city in Europe lost virtually all of its remaining Jewish inhabitants to premeditated murder. On the edge of Kyiv (Kiev), in and near the ravine called Babyn Yar, more Jews (33,771, according to the murderers) were slaughtered in two days during World War II than in any other single German massacre. The Babyn Yar massacre is the most widely known instance of a specific type of killing in the Holocaust: mass murder near the places where the victims, often not even registered first, used to live. This was massive local death. Its aftermath was also specific: local residents led their lives next to the mass graves of their school mates and neighbors – often unmarked graves, but present all the same. Massive and local – these were the predominant features of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. This is still the lesser known part of the Holocaust. In other regions in Western and Central Europe, and also partly in western Ukraine, the killings took place after transportation further away. 2/ What was the Holocaust? The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of Jews, or more precisely: the systematic state-sponsored murder of millions of people persecuted just for being Jews, by Germans and those assisting them, during the Second World War. The Holocaust prematurely ended the lives of almost six million men, women, and children. Thus at least three-quarters of all the Jews who came within reach of Nazi Germany and its allies were killed. The Holocaust additionally imposed suffering and trauma upon millions of others who somehow survived. And the Holocaust also had a huge impact on other people, not Jews themselves, who had to live with the awful memories and losses. The extermination was shockingly fast and extensive: in just 20 months, from June 1941 to February 1943, three quarters of the nearly six million Jews were killed. It was also confined to a specific part of Europe: until the spring of 1943, perhaps 03150, Kyiv, Ukraine t: +38 044 233 66 17 5 100A, Velyka Vasylkivska, off.901-90 babynyar.org [email protected] nine-tenths of the victims died in the Central and Eastern European states that existed before 1939, including Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Years of persecution had preceded the Holocaust. (An alternative perspective would be to say that the Holocaust itself began earlier than 1941, gradually, with non- lethal persecution.) No explanation of the extermination can omit these years. Beginning in the German Reich after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, this persecution was extended to the Saar region (in 1935), and then (from 1938) to annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. During the Second World War, unleashed in Europe by two cruel and spiteful totalitarian regimes led by Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and in the context of German occupation, the Nazi anti-Jewish campaign radicalized into mass murder. From mid-1941, the Nazis began systematic killing in Eastern Europe, and from 1942 the process began including victims from Western Europe. Persecution was also extended to the regions of North Africa occupied by the German and Italian armed forces. 3/ Can we really understand the Holocaust? On September 30, 1941, the second day of the Babyn Yar massacre, a Kyivan called Iryna Khoroshunova wrote in her diary: “Some people are saying that the Jews are being shot with machine guns, being shot one and all. Others are saying that sixteen special trains have been prepared for them and they will be sent off. Whither? No one can answer. Only one thing is known for certain: all their papers, belongings, and food are being taken away from them. Then they’re being driven to Babyn Yar and there... I don’t know what happens there. The one thing I know is that something monstrous, something terrible, something unimaginable is happening, something that cannot be understood, realized, or explained.” Iryna’s response was humane and does not surprise us. Those of us living so many decades later may also conclude that the why and how of Babyn Yar, indeed of the Holocaust as a whole, are beyond our reach. These events can seem to be incomprehensible. By responding in this way, we distance ourselves from something that disgusts us. But we must try to understand the Holocaust, one of the best 03150, Kyiv, Ukraine t: +38 044 233 66 17 6 100A, Velyka Vasylkivska, off.901-90 babynyar.org [email protected] documented events in world history. It is no less comprehensible than other parts of the past. If we do not believe this, then we, as the American historian Peter Hayes has written, “capitulate to a belief in fate, divine purpose, or sheer randomness in human events” and “duck the challenge to our most cherished illusions about ourselves and each other.” 4/ Why is it important to remember the Holocaust? This project is not only of intellectual interest, but also speaks to present-day and future interests. We must learn about the perpetrators and the circumstances under which their atrocities became possible. The setting and the background of the Holocaust are highly relevant to us today, because a country deemed civilized and obsessed with “race” and “enemies” carried out this utterly primitive act. The story of millions of Jewish victims must be passed on to future generations. We must tell the story of their lives and explain the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Kyiv, Ukraine, and beyond. We must remember those who helped the victims. This narrative includes a framework for describing the responses of Jews and of attempts by Ukrainians and others to help Jews. This framework enables curators to make considered choices in selecting for presentation the histories of Jewish, Ukrainian, and other individuals and families. And, painful as it may be, we must talk about the involvement – the sometimes deep involvement – of non-Germans and of locals in occupied countries in the Holocaust. No society where Jews were living during the Holocaust ultimately looks quite so principled or to have been active enough in resisting it. That is another reason why humanity should remember the Holocaust. Holocaust remembrance helps in our thinking about good and evil, and about human capacities. Hopefully this knowledge, and discussion of it, will enable Ukrainians and other citizens of the world to safeguard our societies from future crimes against humanity. Debates over the meaning of this past, as with other parts of the past, are not a weakness. They are signs of vitality and strength. Open exchange of views is absolutely necessary for the sustenance and survival of democracy. The BYHMC 03150, Kyiv, Ukraine t: +38 044 233 66 17 7 100A, Velyka Vasylkivska, off.901-90 babynyar.org [email protected] strongly supports Ukraine’s endeavor to develop as a self-reflective, deliberative democracy based on the values of human rights and mutual respect. 5/ How does the narrative define “Europe,” “Ukraine,” its “neighbors,” and “Eastern Europe?” Europe is defined in geographic terms, which traditionally place it between the western coasts of Ireland and Portugal (10°W) and the Ural Mountains (60°E).