Babi Yar, Kyiv's Holocaust memorial to victims of Nazis, damaged in Russian bombing attack
Russian forces on Tuesday damaged Babi Yar, one of Europe's most prominent Holocaust memorials, amid a brutal onslaught of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. The damage quickly drew international condemnation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff said the Russian military had bombed a nearby radio tower that killed five people and damaged the memorial.
"To the world: what is the point of saying 'never again' for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating…," Zelenskyy wrote in a tweet.
"Just now, a powerful barrage is underway. A missile hit the place where Babyn Yar memorial complex is located! Once again, these barbarians are murdering the victims of (the) Holocaust," Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy's chief of staff, wrote in a tweet.
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The White House on Tuesday afternoon said President Joe Biden spoke with Zelenskyy about "Russia’s escalation of attacks on sites used by civilians in Ukraine, including today’s bombing near Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial."
Babi Yar is the site of one of the worst mass killings during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine. In September 1941, Nazi forces killed more than 33,000 Jewish people — Kyiv's Jewish population at the time — in one of the worst mass murders during the Holocaust and World War II.
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The site of the killings in Kyiv is now a memorial to the victims and an international monument against such violence. The complex also holds memorials to others murdered by the Nazis, including Roma and Ukrainian resisters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine would lead to the "denazification" of the country and end a made-up "genocide" of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, which is not occurring, in the country's east. Zelenskyy, Ukraine's president, is both a native Russian speaker from Ukraine's east and Jewish.
Holocaust remembrance groups around the world strongly condemned the damaging of the site.
The U.S. Holocaust Museum wrote it is "outraged at the damage inflicted on the Babyn Yar memorial by Russia’s attack today," calling the site "sacred ground" in a tweet.
"We condemn the attack on the Jewish cemetery near the memorial site commemorating the Holocaust of the Jews of Kyiv and the murder of the Jewish people in Babi Yar. We call for preserving and respecting the sanctity of the site," according to a translation of a tweet by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid that did not mention Russia by name.
Follow Matthew Brown online @mrbrownsir.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine's Holocaust memorial, Babi Yar, damaged by Russian attack
