Khreshchatyk Blvd. is the Champs-Elysees of Kiev. If anyone wants to advertise anything, this is the place to erect billboards. If you want to tell a story through signs, this is the natural place to pick.
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On Tuesday morning, a street cleaner, not young, wearing a yellow coverall, stopped sweeping the sidewalks so she could read the new signs that had been put up. Her face showed surprise, interest, horror, curiosity, and possibly all of these, over the terrifying historic event perpetrated a few kilometers from here, northwest of where she and I were standing – a valley of slaughter in which 100,000-150,000 people were murdered, 50,000 of them Jews.
Babi Yar. A place that has become synonymous with Hell for an entire people, where 33,000 Jews were systematically murdered in the space of two days, before the use of gas chambers, which saved bullets. And this didn't happen 1,000 years ago, but started at the end of September 1941, yesterday in terms of the human calendar.
For many long years, there were no bullet shells, no names, no graves, and no monuments to testify. The victims were destroyed a second time. The Nazis slaughtered, the Ukrainians helped them during the war, and the Soviets covered it up. The historical display erected on the boulevard allows passers-by an impression of the historical signs, in which Soviet propaganda is clearly displayed – Jews are shown as Nazis in the context of the "Big Israel" project. Instead of commemoration, this was slander. And not only that.
Three hours after the encounter with the horrific episode of history on the boulevard, I'm in a different place in our history, Jewish history. Isaac "Bougie" Herzog, president of the Jewish state, the son of a former president and the grandson of a great rabbi, is being given a state welcome at the Ukrainian presidential palace. Holocaust and rebirth in a single morning. This is our wonderful story.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday in a joint statement with Herzog that Ukraine was working to pass a law against antisemitism, and Herzog mentioned that Ukraine had boycotted the 20th anniversary event of the Durban Conference. This is very important, but not enough. Ukraine should not be afraid to confront its past, and with the right education in its schools it can make its antisemitic chapter, which included some national heroes, clear to the young generation. France under Chirac did the same thing after Mitterand refused to, when it recognized the crimes of the Vichy government under the Nazi occupation, and it only added to the country's honor.
On Tuesday, along with Israel Hayom's correspondent in Kiev, Ariel Bulshtein, we sat down with a young local woman, Lana, an event coordinator. She is intelligent and studied humanities at the University of Kiev. She explains that the Cossacks were not antisemitic, and neither was the traitorous dictator Khmelnytsky.
History teaches us about dark periods in the relations between Cossacks and Jews, and Khmelnytsky himself, one of the fathers of Ukrainian nationalism and leader of the Cossak rebellion against the Poles, was responsible for the 1648 rioting against Polish Jewry, which killed thousands of Jews.
Ukraine shouldn't be afraid to confront its dark chapters. Tuesday's visit and the way in which the country is marking the 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre illustrates how far Ukraine has come in the right direction. Whoever said that history is written in the ink of the past was right. In the case of Babi Yar, it's not ink, but blood.
In the meantime, when you hear some of the young people here explaining that what we see as antisemitism is nothing more than love for their country, a kind of nationalism, you realize that we don't really speak the same language as the rest of the world's citizens. And maybe because of that, there are some who claim that antisemitism is just part of generalized racism or another form of xenophobia in an attempt to reach the hearts of the citizens of the world and today's young people, and there are some like me who think that just like the Babi Yar massacre, the unique Jewish experience is of great importance. That's why it's so important to stress – of course there is racism and xenophobia in the world, but there is also a special form of it directed at Jews – which is why it is so important that they have a Jewish home in a Jewish state. And to those who are busy with the work, work and commemoration – we can only congratulate them and tell them what they already know, that their work is eternal and will never end. Societies and nations will seek to cover it up, like the Soviets did, and we will always insist on remembering.
On Tuesday, I was reminded of a French ceremony commemorating Vel d'Hiv, at which former French President Francois Holland recalled that it was French police – not Germans – who persecuted and founded up the Jews of Paris in 1942 and sent them to die in concentration camps.
On Wednesday, we will be taking part in the important ceremony at the valley of death itself. For the sake of the victims, for the sake of their relatives, for the sake of humanity as a whole – Ukraine needs to tell the world its full story. The event in Kiev brought it honor.
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