Russian Attack On Kyiv’s Babyn Yar: History Repeats After 80 Years Of Holocaust

New Delhi: The attack by Russian forces on Babyn Yar (also known as Babi Yar) Holocaust Memorial Center in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv was a grim reminder of the massacre of thousands of Jews by Nazi forces during World War II.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry confirmed Tuesday’s attack in a tweet, in which it equated Russia with barbarism. Five persons died and five others were wounded when Russian forces attacked the main television tower in Kyiv’s Babi Yar district.

It was not clear to what extent the memorial was damaged by the strike. The memorial is close to Kyiv’s main radio and television tower in Kyiv, which was hit by a projectile, New York Times reported.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, a Jew himself, took to Twitter on Tuesday with a message for the world . Referring to the Babyn Yar site in the country’s capital Kyiv, Zelenskyy said “history is repeating”.

“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’s post on the microblogging site read.

A blast was heard around Kyiv and smoke was seen rising in Babi Yar district, the interior ministry said, adding that equipment had been damaged and television channels “won’t work for a while”.

What happened at Babyn Yar during WW II?

The Babyn Yar incident had happened over the course of a few days in 1941 as part of Nazi Germany’s campaign against the Soviet Union – of which both Russia and Ukraine were a part then. The Soviets along with the United States, Great Britain and France were part of the Allies that had fought against the Axis powers, comprising Germany, Japan and Italy.

According to documentaries on World War II, Jews were asked to assemble at the Babyn Yar ravine site with all their valuables, and then shot one after the other by Nazi forces. The incident goes down as one of many crimes that the Nazis committed to wipe out Jews from Europe.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Israel, called for the site to be preserved, saying it had “irreplaceable value for research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust.”

Natan Sharansky, the chair of the memorial’s advisory board and a former Soviet dissident, said in a statement that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had sought “to distort and manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country” and called the move “utterly abhorrent.”

Sharansky added, “It is symbolic that he starts attacking Kyiv by bombing the site of the Babyn Yar, the biggest of Nazi massacre,” New York Times reported.