On the eve of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, at the invitation of the Chief Rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine, the President of the Association of Jewish Religious Organizations Yaakov Dov Bleich, and the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, the Jewish organizations and communities of Kyiv have held a joint memorial prayer on the territory of the Babyn Yar National Historical and Memorial Reserve.
Rabbis from Kyiv, students of Jewish yeshivah theological schools, and believers gathered to take part in a prayer in the “Place for reflection” symbolic synagogue in memory of the Jews killed in the 1941 massacre.
The prayer was the first event among many others planned for the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy.
“80 years ago, on the eve of this holiday, all the Jews of Kyiv were exterminated. And it is a miracle in itself that Jews can stand and pray in this place today. Every Jew must remember that it is his or her choice to come or not to come to Babyn Yar today. But 80 years ago, the Jews of Kyiv had no choice. They were led here to be killed… and we have to remember those days,” said Jaakov Dov Bleich.
The rabbi also reminded that only on the first day of the shootings in Babyn Yar 33,771 people had been killed. He urged to remember and imagine at least one person, an adult or a child, to feel what had happened in those days.
“We should not just live in Kyiv,” Jaakov Dov Bleich stressed, “but live and feel that those were our brothers and sisters.” If it weren’t for those Jews, the other Jews, of whom there are about 60,000 today, would have had nowhere to return. And after the war, when the Jews returned, each of them had someone who had been shot here,” added Yaakov Dov Bleich.
