Babyn Yar Holocaust Ukraine - 80th Anniversary - History, Memory and Heritage

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy, this panel was organised by the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and the House of European History. Babyn Yar is often considered symbolic of the “forgotten story” of the Holocaust: around 2.5 million Jews, 1.5 of them Ukrainian Jews, who were not taken to camps and gas chambers, but shot dead and buried in mass graves near their homes across Eastern Europe. Until now, their story has largely evaded the historical record, for many years due to a deliberate policy of the USSR. The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) is being developed to fittingly remember the approximately 100,000 Jewish victims shot at the Babyn Yar ravine by the Nazis. This includes those murdered in the largest massacre of WWII in September 1941, and the tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Roma, mentally ill and others shot thereafter throughout the occupation of Kyiv. Babyn Yar is the largest mass grave in Europe. As emphasised by Father Desbois during this conference, the lessons of Babyn Yar are not only about the past. Humanity must use them to prevent the mass crimes of the present. CHAPTERS: 00:19 - Welcome by Constanze Itzel, Museum director 04:22 - Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of BYHMC 10:35 - Michael Gahler MEP 15:50 - Petras Auštrevičius MEP 20:35 - Marek Rutka, , Member of the Sejm, Chair of The Parliamentary Group at Babyn Yar 22:56 - Father Patrick Desbois, Keynote, Chairman of the BYHMC Academic Council, founder and president of Yahad-In Unum 38:23 - Dr. Wendy Lower, "Lessons from Babyn Yar: History, Memory and Legacy" 59:35 - Dr. Martin Dean, "The Holocaust by Bullets and Babyn Yar" 1:13:55 - Ruslan Kavatsiuk, "The Territory and Monuments of Babyn Yar" 1:30:30 - Audience Q&A Participants: Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center Father Patrick Desbois, Chairman of the BYHMC Academic Council, founder and president of Yahad-In Unum Dr. Andrej Umansky, Deputy Head of the BYHMC Academic Council, Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Board Member of the BYHMC Dr. Vladislav Hrynevich, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Dr. Wendy Lower, Director, Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College, USA Dr. Martin Dean, Adjunct Professor at Kean University, USA Marek Rutka, Member of the Sejm, and Chair of The Parliamentary Group for the Commemoration of the Holocaust Crime at Babyn Yar - For a Europe free from Genocide and Hatred Michael Gahler, Member of the European Parliament (EPP), co-chair of the Working Group Babyn Yar – Memory for the Future Petras Auštrevičius, Member of the European Parliament (Renew Europe), Memory for the Future Dr. Constanze Itzel, Museum Director of the House of European History © Archives of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research/Johannes Hähle