“To the world: what’s the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years if the world is silent when a bomb falls on the same spot on Babin Yar?” At least 5 killed. History repeats itself … “, Zelenski tweeted.
Tuesday’s strike was the latest example of what human rights groups have described as indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces. Moscow has said it focuses only on military infrastructure, but missiles and artillery shells have hit residential areas in Kyiv, Kharkiv and across Ukraine.
The blow to the Holocaust memorial had a special symbolic weight.
A statement from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem condemned the strike and called on the international community “to protect the lives of civilians and these historic sites because of their irreplaceable value.”
“We continue to monitor with serious concern the scandalous acts of aggression against civilian targets in Ukraine,” the statement said.
Babin Yar, or Babi Yar, is a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv, where in two days in September 1941, more than 33,000 Jews were shot by Nazi-led assassination teams in a campaign against the Soviet Union.
The Holocaust Memorial in Babin Yar was unveiled last year after repeated delays. The center’s chairman, Nathan Sharansky, was born in Ukraine and is one of the most famous “rejectors” – Jews in the Soviet Union who openly oppose bans on Jewish emigration.
The strike has reverberated in Jewish communities around the world following Putin’s claim that he invaded Ukraine to “denazify” her government and stop “genocide”, a factual allegation aimed at discrediting Zelensky and others. Ukrainian nationalists against Russian control.
“Putin seeks to distort and manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democracy, is utterly disgusting,” Sharansky said in a statement Tuesday. “It is symbolic that he began attacking Kyiv by bombing the site of Babin Yar, the largest of the Nazi massacres.
Zelenski is also Jewish and some members of his family died in the Holocaust. While his grandfather survived, three of Zelenski’s great-grandsons were executed as part of Germany’s genocide of European Jews during the war. About 1.5 million of the 6 million Jews killed are Ukrainians.
There are several Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary groups, such as the Azov and Right Sector movements, and the far-right Svoboda party, which has one seat in parliament. But they have little public support.
Putin’s rhetoric is aimed at selling the war to Russians at home, about whom anti-fascism talks still resonate deeply, said Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University.
Critics of Putin’s rhetoric, including Zelensky, say he is using the trauma of the war and distorting its history to his advantage.
The practice of Judaism and Jewish rituals was effectively banned in the Soviet Union. In an interview in 2020, Zelensky said he grew up in an “ordinary Soviet Jewish family” that, like most Jewish families in the Soviet Union, is not religious. You know that religion did not exist in the Soviet state as such.
When Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, at least 43,000 Jews lived in Ukraine. Like other Ukrainians, some have fled their homes in other cities or other countries since the start of the war, and some have remained.
The Washington Post confirmed videos of the TV tower attack in Kyiv on Tuesday, which appear to show that the structure and the area immediately around it were hit at least twice.
In one video, a man stopped at a crossroads filming a television tower from about a quarter of a mile away. A few seconds after the video, a fireball exploded in place. It takes a few moments for the sound of the explosion to reach the audience.
“Everybody get down,” a man shouted as he got out of the car. “Closer to the ground, away from the glass. There may be another strike. “
From another point of view, the bomb appears to have been struck near the Holocaust Memorial in Babin Yar, just west of the tower.
The frame of the TV tower is still standing after the impact. The Ukrainian Interior Ministry said the strike on the tower had interrupted the service, adding that backup channels would soon be available.
Berger and Lee reported from Washington.