In Babi Yar, the Nazis massacred 33,771 Jews. The struggle to preserve their memory remains of paramount importance.

On September 29 and 30, 1941, the Nazis executed 33,771 Jews at Babyn Yar—a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv that became one of the primary sites of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. This exact figure is known because it was meticulously documented by the perpetrators themselves.

The Jews of Kyiv had been ordered to report with their documents, money, valuables, and warm clothing. Many believed they were being resettled. Instead, they were driven to the ravine, forced to strip, and shot. Over those two days, the majority of the Jewish population remaining in the occupied city was systematically murdered. For the Nazis, identifying their targets was straightforward: they were Jews.

In the post-war period, this historical fact became increasingly inconvenient for the Soviet Union.

In the official language of state remembrance, the murdered Jews were recast as "peaceful Soviet citizens." Formally, this was not a falsehood; the Jews of Kyiv were indeed Soviet citizens. Yet this phrasing erased the very element crucial to understanding the crime: they were murdered specifically because they were Jews.

This case illustrates a broader lesson in the politics of memory, one that extends far beyond the Soviet Union. To distort history, outright denial is unnecessary. Often, the event remains, the statistics remain, and the location remains. Only the identity of the victim is altered.

Eighty-five years after Babyn Yar, this distinction remains critical. Indeed, it serves as a warning. A universal memory cannot be constructed by depersonalizing its victims. It must begin by addressing three fundamental questions: who was killed, who killed them, and why.

The Victims Were Not Exclusively Jewish

Following September 1941, Babyn Yar continued to serve as an execution site. Throughout the German occupation, the Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, psychiatric hospital patients, and other civilians were also executed there. The total death toll is generally estimated at approximately 100,000. All of them constitute a part of the history of this site.

However, remembering all victims does not mean obscuring the specific sequence of crimes. The operation on September 29–30 was organized explicitly for the elimination of Kyiv's Jews, marking one of the largest single massacres of what is now frequently referred to as the "Holocaust by bullets."

The Soviet authorities documented Nazi atrocities and prosecuted war criminals. They did not deny the events of Babyn Yar. Their method of distortion was far more subtle.

The formula of "peaceful Soviet citizens" fit into a broader narrative in which the war was commemorated primarily as the collective suffering and shared victory of the Soviet people. Within this framework, there was little room for the specific Jewish experience of Nazi extermination. While the victims were granted a place in public memory, the reason they became victims was systematically excised.

A similar transformation occurred at the physical site itself. The ravine was gradually filled, industrial waste was pumped in, and roads, parks, and urban development altered the landscape beyond recognition.

And yet, memory persisted outside of official institutions. The survivors remembered. Families preserved photographs and letters. People gathered at the ravine. Writers, musicians, and ordinary citizens maintained a record that lacked a fitting public monument.

The Poet Who Restored the Forbidden Word

Among them was the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. While he did not create the memory of what happened to the Jews at Babyn Yar, in 1961, he gave it a voice that resonated across the entire country.

In the summer of 1961, Yevtushenko visited Babyn Yar. He was struck not only by the absence of a proper memorial but by the mundane neglect of the site. There was virtually nothing to indicate to a visitor that one of the largest massacres of the Holocaust had occurred there.

His response was the poem "Babi Yar," published in "Literaturnaya Gazeta" on September 19, 1961. Its opening line—noting that there are no monuments over Babyn Yar—carried immense weight because it was literally true. However, the primary challenge lay in what followed.

Yevtushenko situated the massacre within the historical continuum of antisemitism. His lyric hero identifies with Dreyfus, with a child in a pogrom, with Anne Frank, and with the Jews slaughtered at Babyn Yar.

Yevtushenko was not Jewish. This fact was central to the significance of his action. A Russian poet had publicly rejected the notion that Jewish suffering was a matter concerning only the Jewish people.

The reaction was immediate. The poem circulated throughout the country, sparking a debate that extended far beyond literary circles. Critics accused Yevtushenko of elevating Jewish suffering to the detriment of Russians, Ukrainians, and other peoples of the USSR.

This accusation exposed the very issue the poem sought to address. To state that Jews were murdered as Jews was, in the eyes of his critics, to diminish all others. This argument proved remarkably durable.

Shostakovich Sets the Poem to Music

Dmitri Shostakovich read the poem and resolved to set it to music. The project, which began with "Babi Yar," expanded into his Thirteenth Symphony, completed in 1962. Shostakovich added four more of Yevtushenko's poems, transforming the work into a broader meditation on fear, conformity, everyday humiliation, and the compromises demanded by an authoritarian society.

The Jewish theme was not new to the composer. In 1948, at the height of Stalin's campaign against Jewish culture, he had composed the vocal cycle "From Jewish Folk Poetry," which could only be performed publicly after Stalin's death.

The Thirteenth Symphony was of an entirely different scale and prominence. While a poem could be clipped from a newspaper and hidden between book pages, copied by hand, or read at home, a symphony for bass soloist, male choir, and a full orchestra transformed these words into a collective, public experience.

The political atmosphere surrounding the work was tense. Nikita Khrushchev attacked Yevtushenko for his interpretation of Babyn Yar, objecting to the focus on Jewish victims. Pressures continued even after the premiere.

Consequently, Yevtushenko altered certain passages of the poem. The new lines explicitly mentioned Russians and Ukrainians lying alongside Jews at Babyn Yar, shifting the emphasis toward the collective struggle of the Soviet people against fascism.

Shostakovich initially resisted these changes. For subsequent performances, he agreed to substitute the eight lines with Yevtushenko’s revised text, but the composer's original manuscript preserved the initial version.

Looking back from a safe distance, it is easy to categorize those who lived under a dictatorship as either heroes or collaborators. Real lives are far more complex. Neither Yevtushenko nor Shostakovich should be canonized as saints. Both operated within the Soviet system, and both made compromises with it.

Yet neither renounced their core commitment. Yevtushenko did not repudiate "Babi Yar," and Shostakovich did not remove it from his symphony.

Under an authoritarian regime, courage does not always manifest as an uncompromising gesture. Sometimes, it consists of preserving just enough truth to withstand the pressure exerted upon it.

Remembering the Dead of Others

There is another compelling reason to recall Yevtushenko and Shostakovich today. Neither of them was Jewish.

Antisemitism is frequently treated as though it were primarily an internal Jewish concern. Jewish organizations are expected to protest it; Jewish historians document it; Jewish families preserve the memory of its victims. Subsequently, Jews are asked to explain to the rest of the world why this matters.

Yevtushenko and Shostakovich crossed this boundary.

The poet could have visited Babyn Yar, felt shocked, and moved on. The composer could have admired the poem privately, keeping his name and reputation clear of a work bound to draw state scrutiny. Instead, they chose to make their solidarity public.

Their choice addresses a question that extends far beyond Babyn Yar: what responsibility do we bear when those being persecuted are not "our own"?

For Soviet Jews, therefore, the significance of "Babi Yar" and the Thirteenth Symphony exceeded the artistic value of each work individually. Two central figures of Russian culture had declared that Jewish memory must not remain confined to Jewish homes. It belonged to society as a whole.

When Universalism Becomes Erasure

It is tempting to believe that modern memorial culture has rendered the old Soviet struggle over Babyn Yar obsolete. This is not the case.

While the vocabulary has changed, the temptation remains identical. The identity of victims is acknowledged when it aligns with the dominant political narrative, and deemed inconvenient when it does not. Historical specificity is still dismissed as an attempt to claim special status. A universalist language can still be employed not to expand memory, but to purge it of uncomfortable facts.

This does not imply that Jewish suffering should be elevated above that of others.

The Roma murdered at Babyn Yar must be remembered as Roma. Soviet prisoners of war must be remembered in the specific circumstances under which they died. The psychiatric patients murdered by the Nazis must not be dissolved into an abstract total figure—just as the 33,771 Jews murdered on September 29 and 30, 1941, must not be.

The dignity of different victims is not in competition. Equality does not require anonymity.

Thus, the language used by museums, textbooks, public ceremonies, and monuments is of critical importance. A memorial may present precise dates and impressive figures while bypassing the most crucial historical question: who were these people?

The Soviet monument finally dedicated at Babyn Yar on July 2, 1976, was dedicated to "Soviet citizens and prisoners of war, soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army, shot by the German fascists." The Jews were not mentioned in the dedication.

Only on September 29, 1991—half a century after the massacre, as the Soviet era was drawing to a close—was a menorah-shaped monument dedicated to the memory of the Jewish victims of Babyn Yar. It took 50 years for their identity to be granted an explicit place within the memorial space.

Three September Anniversaries

This month brings together three anniversaries that, at first glance, belong to distinct histories.

Eighty-five years ago, the Jews of Kyiv were executed at Babyn Yar. September 19 marked the 65th anniversary of the publication of Yevtushenko's poem. September 25 marked the 120th anniversary of Shostakovich's birth. Together, however, they form a clear sequence.

First came the slaughter. Then followed a political culture that acknowledged the dead while obscuring why so many of them had been targeted. Finally, a poet and a composer emerged, each in his own way resisting this enforced silence.

Their story should not be simplified into a narrative of heroic artists challenging an evil state. It is far more instructive.

Both were complex individuals. Both made compromises. Both had to calculate what could be said, published, or performed. Yet at a critical juncture, each decided that the suffering of people outside his own community was his concern. This choice holds profound relevance for our own time.

Political memory tends to begin with a moral. It asks what the past proves about the present, what cause it supports, which nation it vindicates, or which ideology it condemns. In this process, the victims themselves can disappear remarkably quickly.

Babyn Yar suggests a different order of remembrance: to begin with the individual who was killed. To state who they were. To state why they were condemned to die. To resist the temptation to immediately convert an individual life into an illustration for an external political argument. Only then can memory become truly universal.

Yevtushenko and Shostakovich understood this—imperfectly, but courageously—in a country where the official language of memory directed them to do the opposite.

Eighty-five years after Babyn Yar, we continue to debate how to remember the dead. Let us at least begin by allowing them to remain who they were.