Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the advisory board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, wrote: “Putin seeks to distort and manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country is utterly abhorrent. It is symbolic that he starts attacking Kyiv by bombing the site of the Babyn Yar, the biggest of Nazi massacre.”
A spokesman for the European Jewish Association (EJA) said: “It is with shock and great sadness that we learn of the bombing and loss of life at Babyn Yar. Just last month we brought a delegation of parliamentarians from all over Europe to the site to honour the memories of those who were massacred there,’’ he said.
A Russian airstrike hit Kyiv’s main television tower in the heart of the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday, knocking out some state broadcasting but leaving the structure intact.
At least five people died and five were injured in the missile strike, the Ukrainian emergencies service said.
According to Ukrainian authorities, the Russian strike has also damaged the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial site which sits on top of a mass grave containing some 34,000 Jews who were murdered there in 1941 by the Nazis and their collaborators during their occupation. Last year, plans were unveiled to erect a new memorial center on the site to commemorate the atrocity.
Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the advisory board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC), confirmed the damage.
“Putin seeks to distort and manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country is utterly abhorrent. It is symbolic that he starts attacking Kyiv by bombing the site of the Babyn Yar, the biggest of Nazi massacre,” Sharansky wrote.
He was referring to claims by Putin ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that he was doing so, in part, to “denazify” the country.
“We, at the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, built on Europe’s largest mass grave of the Holocaust, work to preserve historical memory following decades of Soviet suppression of historical truth, so that the evils of the past can never be repeated. We must not allow the truth to — once again — become the victim of war,” said Sharansky, who was born in Ukraine.
On Twitter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lamented the irony of the Holocaust memorial being hit.
“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?” he wrote. He added that “at least 5 killed. History repeating…”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid strongly condemned the attack on the Babi Yar site. “We condemn the attack on the Jewish cemetery near the memorial site commemorating the Holocaust of the Jews of Kyiv and the murder of the Jewish people in Babi Yar. We call for preserving and respecting the sanctity of the site,” Lapid wrote.
Separately, on Tuesday, The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center also asked the International Criminal Court to speak out against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s false claims of genocide as a pretext for war.
“If President Putin wants to denounce genocide, he should reach out to those in the system of international justice, not begin a war against the people of Ukraine under false pretenses,” the statement read.
Responding to Tuesday’s bombing and loss of life at the Babyn Yar site, a spokesman for the European Jewish Association (EJA) said: “It is with shock and great sadness that we learn of the bombing and loss of life at Babyn Yar. Just last month we brought a delegation of parliamentarians from all over Europe to the site to honour the memories of those who were massacred there,’’ he said.
‘’That this place, a Holocaust remembrance site, already so full of grief and sadness is witness once again to needless bloodshed is heartbreaking. We send our deepest sympathies to those that perished today,’’ he added.