Ukraine on Friday opened a symbolic wooden synagogue, built as an e-book, in Babi Yar, the site of one of the largest massacres of Jews in World War II.
On 29 and 30 September 1941, more than 33,000 men, women and young people were killed in Babi Yar Canyon on the outskirts of Kiev, one of the largest massacres in the Holocaust. The ravine is also called Babyn Yar.
“The symbolic synagogue is a wonderful step in restoring the reminiscence of all who died here,” Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said at the ceremony.
The synagogue built through the Bathroughn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, which also plans to build a main monument on the site.
The cult position designed to open as an emerging e-book and is decorated with prayers.
“The synagogue’s eBook is decorated with motifs and prayer texts that recreate the classic interior of ancient synagogues in western Ukraine, destroyed World War II and the Holocaust,” the creators said.
“The roof of the synagogue is decorated with patterns on the map of the starry sky, which reproduces the position of the stars on September 29, 1941, the first day of mass shootings at Babyn Yar. “
The synagogue built with old oak wood collected in abandoned buildings in Ukraine.
Currently, the building houses a monument built by the Soviet government in 1976. He is engaged to “Soviet citizens and prisoners of war” and does not mention Jewish victims.
People attend the rite of opening of Babi Yar’s symbolic synagogue, a position in Kiev where the Nazis shot dead tens of thousands of Jews in 1941 Photo: AFP / Sergei SUPINSKY
In 1991, a month after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Jews erected a menora-shaped sculpture nearby.
The opening of the synagogue took place when Ukraine first marked the Remembrance Day of ukrainians who stored world war II Jews.
“It is an example of humanity and self-sacrifice,” tweeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of Jewish descent.
More than 2,600 Ukrainians have been as “Right Among the Nations” through the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem for endangering their lives by saving Jews.
Babi Yar was the scene of mass executions until 1943: up to 100,000 more people were killed there, adding Soviet Jews, gypsies and prisoners of war.
The carnage of Nazi forces in Babi Yar has led to years of introspection and debate in Ukraine about the participation of collaborators in the murders and atrocities that followed.
The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center caused controversy in Ukraine and was accused of selling Moscow’s vision of the tragedy.
Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky, the center’s artistic director, has been criticized for his plan to turn the long-term resort into a “Holocaust Disneyland” that gives visitors the chance to revel in the blood bath as a victim or executioner.