The Babi Yar Massacre: Remembrance and the Politics of Memory

The single largest mass shooting perpetrated by the Nazis in the Soviet Union was in 1941 at Babi Yar, a wooded ravine near Kiev. During September 29-30, almost all of Kiev\u27s Jews were killed. The Nazis tried to cover up the crime, and the Soviets denied Jews were the target of the massacre. Two decades later intellectual dissidents urged the Soviet regime to speak the truth about Babi Yar. But a Jewish monument wasn’t erected on the site until the USSR fell. I will examine efforts to shape thinking about this monstrous deed by exploring how it was remembered and by whom