Politics of memory at massacre site
Few places illustrate the politics of memory like Babi Yar, a site
in the center of Kiev where in September 1941, 33,761 Jews were shot over 72
hours by the Nazis. It was the first mass execution of World War II.
Over the next 18 months, 100,000 more Jews were killed at Babi Yar
along with 60,000 other Nazi targets such as Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of
war.
John Paul II, in a late addition to his schedule, made a
five-minute stop June 25, praying the De Profundis prayer for the
dead.
There are two monuments at Babi Yar. The one visited by the pope
is a piece of Soviet-era artwork, depicting distorted human figures in a scene
of abstract suffering. It makes no mention that most victims were Jewish.
The other memorial is smaller and specifically Jewish, taking the
shape of a menorah. It is located several hundred yards away on the precise
spot where the first wave of killings occurred during Yom Kippur of September
1941. The ravine in which the bodies were buried is today a playground.
The chief rabbi of Ukraine, Yaakov Dov Bleich, a 36-year-old
American of Ukrainian ancestry, requested the Babi Yar stop. He hoped the pope
would visit the Jewish memorial. When Ukrainian government officials got
involved, they decided to have the pope go to the site that recalls all the
victims, Bleich said.
It would have been a totally different experience had
the pope gone to the Jewish memorial, he said. But he was satisfied he came at
all. Jews are not trying to monopolize Babi Yar, he said.
Tensions over interpretation of the visit were nevertheless
obvious. Bleich called it an attempt to unruffle feathers after the
popes mid-May visit to Syria, when some Jews complained that John Paul II
had remained silent as Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad railed against Jews.
Assad suggested they killed Jesus Christ and had tried to kill Mohammad.
Papal spokesperson Joaquín Navarro-Valls, on the other
hand, told reporters that the visit to Babi Yar had nothing to do
with the Syria episode.
Bleich told NCR that Jews in Kiev are also irked by a large
cross erected near the Jewish memorial. To date, he said, neither Catholic nor
Orthodox leaders have spoken against the cross.
After the visit, Bleich was angered that papal handlers had
blocked him from engaging John Paul in dialogue. Bleich spoke the day before at
an interreligious meeting about so-called Holocaust children --
Jewish children given to Christian families for safekeeping and never returned.
Some have never learned their origins, and some Jewish leaders want the
Catholic church to help identify them.
When the popes Mercedes pulled up, there were a few anxious
moments when Bleich explained to aides what he wanted and was informed he
couldnt do it. In the end, he had to be content with simply explaining a
bit of Babi Yars story.
As John Pauls car pulled away, a clearly frustrated Bleich
growled that the people around the pope had behaved like
bastards.
He nevertheless maintained his sense of humor. A photographer had
asked him, he said, if he wanted a copy of his picture with the pope. He turned
it down.
All I could do is send it to my mother, and she would want
to know, Whos the guy in the yarmulke next to my son?
-- John L. Allen Jr.
National Catholic Reporter, July 13,
2001
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