Starting in September of 1941, the Nazis marched tens of thousands of Jews to the edge of the Babyn Yar Ravine in Ukraine. There they stripped the townspeople, shot and pushed them in.
Babyn Yar is the name of a ravine in the northwestern section of Kyiv. A. Anatoli described the ravine as "enormous, you might even say majestic: deep and wide, like a mountain gorge. If you stood on one side of it and shouted you would scarcely be heard on the other."
It was here that the Nazis shot the Jews. In small groups of ten, the Jews were taken along the edge of the ravine. One of the very few survivors remembers she "looked down and her head swam, she seemed to be so high up. Beneath her was a sea of bodies covered in blood."
Once the Jews were lined up, the Nazis used a machine-gun to shoot them. When shot, they fell into the ravine. Then the next were brought along the edge and shot. According to the Einsatzgruppe Operational Situation Report No. 101, 33,771 Jews were killed at Babyn Yar on September 29 and 30.
But this was not the end of the killing at Babyn Yar. The Nazis next rounded up Gypsies and killed them. Patients of the Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital were gassed and then dumped into the ravine. Soviet prisoners of war were brought to the ravine and shot. Thousands of other civilians were killed at Babyn Yar for trivial reasons, such as a mass shooting in retaliation for just one or two people breaking a Nazi order. The killing continued for months. It is estimated that possibly up to 100,000 people were murdered there.
The Babyn Yar massacre is considered to be "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust."
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Through the sponsorship of the US-Ukraine Foundation, this important monument is being made. The sculpture is already underway- a Museum Quality 12-15ft version that will be available as a traveling exhibition to Jewish History Museums and other interested venues. Your tax-deductible funds are necessary for the completion of this production. Please contribute through the US-Ukraine Foundation, specifying the Babyn Yar Project. You can go to US-Ukraine website or call (202) 223-2228 and ask for John Kun.
Requiem is an emotionally resonant visual remembrance of the under-represented genocide that happened in the ravine, Babyn Yar, Kyiv, 1941-1943.Funding for this project will allow us to complete the massive 12-15ft. diameter, 2 1/2 ft. deep sculptural monument within an expected 2 year time period- in 2012.
Today, museums and other public venues are struggling economically. Even in a city the size of Los Angeles, no museum can afford to build their own display acknowledging this atrocity. This sculptural project, Requiem, offers an alternative to the economic obstacle facing these public venues: it will be the monument to travel to the people. Its goal is to reach every community so that this genocide (and all such genocides in Ukraine) will not fade into the annals of history, possibly to be labeled as a historical myth. This traveling exhibition will bring to light vital aspects of an atrocity on humanity that must not be overlooked or forgotten. It will show, for example, how the Babyn Yar massacre was a pivotal point in the Nazi's killing methodology, explaining how the blatant public murdering of masses of individuals was so visceral that it affected the persons committing the killing. The Nazi's learned that they would have to continue with a more insidious and impersonal rampage- the gas chambers and concentration camps.Using Babyn Yar as the lead example, this exhibition will also encompass all the "Babyn Yars" in Ukraine. Babyn Yar might have been the largest such mass killing, but many more people were similarly killed in Ukraine and the surrounding areas. This traveling exhibition will be the scholarly presentation of all such atrocities.
Requiem is not just a dry museum educational tool. In the same way a really powerful movie can move a person through a complex range of emotional growth, Requiem absorbs the viewer into the event itself. Because Requiem is designed and sculpted in a realistic manner with true emotional clarity, the viewer can feel the humanity as if they were the victims themselves.
The target population of Requiem is the entire world. The hardness of the world can only be changed one mind at a time. By having this work installed in museums across the United States, each person who walks through this exhibition will feel the loss. Without acknowledgement of this horrible event, the subsequent surviving generations cannot heal.
It is the hope of the the USUF that this monument will eventually be allowed to be cast at 75 ft. life-size and permanently housed on site in Kyiv. Requiem, the traveling exhibition will first familiarize the people of the United States of this genocide and gain a ground-swell of support against those nay-sayers who claim that this atrocity never happened.
Please help us by contributing your tax-deductible donation to the US-Ukraine Foundation (specify for this project). Call 202-223-2228.Any and all amounts will be used toward this ambitious undertaking!
All proceeds go directly
to the first year of production!
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