“Black” anniversary for Ukraine: 80 years since the Babi Yar massacre

The 80th anniversary of the massacre of civilians in the Babi Yar Gorge in -Nazi-occupied Kiev, one of the largest massacres Jewish during the Holocaust, honored today, Wednesday (29/9) the Ukraine.

Nazi troops in Babi Yar killed almost 34,000 Jews, men, women and children, on September 29-30, 1941. In the two years that followed, about 150,000 people In total, mostly Jews, but also Ukrainians, Russians, Poles and Roma, were killed there, according to the APE-MPE.

“Two words, behind which more than 100,000 human lives. Two words, behind which millions of mutilated degrees. Two words, followed by 80 years of common pain of the Jewish people and the Ukrainian people. “Babi Yar,” the Ukrainian president said in a statement Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Two small words that sound like two shots, but carry long and terrible memories for generations,” Zelenski said.

Silently, Zelensky attended a ceremony near the monument with the Jewish seven-light lamp raised in honor of the victims at the site of the massacre. Flowers and wreaths were laid by soldiers, children and relatives of the dead.

Zelensky is the first president of Ukraine of Jewish descent, although he is not religious. Most of his grandfather’s family was killed during the war.

“The death belt in Babi Yar did not stop until the liberation of Kiev from the occupiers. “This piece of land in Kiev has become one of the epicenters of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe,” said a statement issued by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

Last week, Ukraine’s parliament passed a law criminalizing anti-Semitism and imposing penalties for anti-Semitic hate speech.