KIEV, UKRAINE — Something un-
precedented and extremely hopeful took
place here last week.

On May 5, nine delegates of the Cana-
dian United Jewish People’s Order
(UJPO), most of them Holocaust survi-
‘vors, marched together with Russians,
Ukrainians, and members of Kiev’s reli-
gious Jewish community to the base of
one of the most painful, emotion-charged
and controversial memorials of the Nazi
rampage across Europe: the monument at
Babi Yar.

Together they made brief speeches of
remembrance, laid a wreath, and read
Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s shattering poem,
Babi Yar, in English, Yiddish and Rus-
sian. Finally the Canadian group sang, in
Yiddish, a battle-song from the Warsaw
ghetto uprising, “Zog Nit Keinmol — Nev-
er say you've walked the final road ...”

Such a ceremony has never occurred
before at Babi Yar, and the fact it hap-
pened now is both a tribute to changing
attitudes withinythe Soviet Union and to
the quiet persistence of an extraordinary
group of Canadians.

“We were in Poland to take part in the
45th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto
uprising,” says David Abramowitz, nat-
ional president of the UJPO. “We knew of
Babi Yar and were intent to come here and

From
Moscow

Fred
Weir

honour all those who suffered and died in
this place. In its way, it isa monument of
equal importance with the Warsaw
ghetto.”

Babi Yar is the name of a ravine within
the city limits of Kiev where, between 1941
and 1943, the Nazis murdered and
dumped the bodies of over 100,000 people.
The majority of the victims were
Jewish —perhaps as many as 70,000
— but many nationalities, including Rus-
sians and Ukrainians, were also among the
dead. -

It is fair to say that Ukrainian authori-
ties were not enthusiastic when the UJPO
plan to hold an explicitly Jewish ceremony
at Babi Yar was first put to them. Compli-
cated politics have swirled around the
Nazi genocide site since the end of the war,
including charges from the West and

Remembering ‘Jews
as Jews,’ among
Nazis’ Kiev victims

Israel that Ukrainians are and remain anti-
Semitic, and counter-charges that ideolog-
ical opponents of the USSR are attempting
to pit Soviet victims of naziism against
each other.

For almost three decades no monument
stood at Babi Yar, a shame that Yevtu-
shenko lambasted in his poem. Then, in
the early 1970s, the city of Kiev erected a
powerful and moving sculpture on the site.
The accompanying plaque records the
number of victims, describing them as
“citizens of the Ukraine,” and makes no
special mention of the Jews.

Whenever the subject of Babi Yar
comes up, Ukrainians are quick — per-
haps too quick — to point out that “not
only Jews are buried there, but people of
many nationalities.” This has struck many
Jews as insensitive, as if it were an effort to
submerge, or deny Jewish identity, long-
standing Jewish presence in the region,
and the special anguish of an entire people
singled out by the Nazis for total extermi-
nation.

Zionists charge that the underlying rea-
son for the Ukrainian attitude is anti-
Semitism, and they have sought to turn
Babi Yar into a militant symbol of the
impossibility of Jews ever being able to
realize their aspirations within the context
of Soviet life.

The truth would appear to be far more
complex and considerably less malignant.
Soviet scholars now concede that some
degree of anti-Semitism remains a back-
ground factor in Soviet life, and that Jew-
ish culture and language are at a very low
ebb. Jewish religious and cultural institu-
tions suffered badly during the Stalinist
anti-religion campaigns of the 1930s,
though these were not directed specifically
against the Jews. Anti-Semitism appeared
in official policy only during the last years
of Stalin, when Jewish doctors and intel-
lectuals were accused of various fanciful

conspiracies.

A far more important factor than any
real or imagined anti-Semitism is the
Soviet nationalities policy over the ‘past
several decades, which has largely ignored
the cultural and linguistic rights of minori-
ties living outside of consolidated national
territories. Jews are among the most
dispersed of Soviet peoples, and this has
left them countrywide in a situation a bit
like that of Armenians in Nagorno Kara-
bakh. Over the years very many Jews have
voluntarily assimilated into surrounding
nationalities, a significant number have
emigrated, but many clearly wish to stay
and strengthen their identity as Soviet
Jews.

New winds are blowing. Kiev, for
instance, has had only one synagogue for
decades, but has recently acquired a new
Jewish theatre and cultural centre. There
are other straws in the wind. Ukrainian
authorities are listening and acting in new
ways.

They listened to the Canadian UJPO
group, and gradually turned from skeptics
to sponsors of the planned ceremony.

“We wanted to make clear that we
came with sympathy in our hearts for all

those who perished at the hands of the’

Nazis,” says Abramowitz. “But we are

* Jews, and we also wanted to recognize the

contribution and suffering of Jews as
Jews.

“Tt was very important to us to be able
to join together with Soviets of different
nationalities in this, for all suffered in
common,” he says. “Moreover, many of
our members are alive today because the
Soviet Union saved them from the Nazis.
The number of Jews who were pulled
from the jaws of death by the Red Army is
not well-known or appreciated in Canada.

One reason for our coming here was to

thank the Soviet people for this.”
For some members of the Canadian

group at Babi Yar, this was no abstrac-
tion.

Miriam Fishbane was born in Dubno,
in the western Ukraine, and recalls that
when the Nazis attacked, Soviet troops .
opened the borders and urged people to
flee east. Miriam walked all the way to
Kuibyshev, on the Volga river. Most of her
family was not so lucky: ”’The Nazis took
them to anopen pit and shot them, just
like what happened at Babi Yar,” she says.
“T am the only one who is left, and | am
remembering today for all of them.”

Toby Flam’s story is similar. She
walked from Lodz to Samarkand, near —
the border of Afghanistan. Though she
was Polish, the Soviets gave her docu-
ments that enabled her to sleep and eat in
collective farms along the way.

Regina Balogh, a Polish Jew, fled to the
Soviet-occupied western Ukraine in 1939
to escape the Nazi onslaught. The Soviets
deported her to Siberia, and she spent a
hard year in a transit camp before being
permitted to settle down for the duration
in Central Asia. “I went hungry some-

~ times, but so did all the Russians,” she

remembers. “They are very kind people,
and I wish the best for them”.

Helen Zisman was seizéd by the Nazis
in Poland, and spent most of the war ina
women’s concentration camp in Germany
near Leipzig. As war’s end neared, in 1945,
the Nazis took her, along with 6,000 pri-
soners from the camp — Helen weighed -
just 20 kilos by then, she. remembers
— and threw them into the Elbe River.

“Of the 6,000 women, just 300 of us
survived,” she said, “and only because
Red Army soldiers suddenly appeared and
came scrambling down the river bank to
pull us out. Now, being here at Babi Yar,
and hearing the Russian language being
spoken around me, I can only think of that
Russian soldier who pulled me out of the
water. He was saying, “Vui svobodni
— You're free, you’re free ....”

‘Last week this special group of Canadi-
ans joined together with Soviets to
remember the common agony of all Nazi
victims, and to make the world a little bit
warmer, a little more understanding, a lit- —
tle more united.

There was no mistaking the critical
moment of that ceremony. Everyone pres-
ent visibly went rigid under the electrifying
impact of the final verse of Yevtushenko’s
poem: “There is no Jewish blood in mine,
But I am adamantly hated by all anti-
Semites as if I were a Jew.

“That is why I am a true Soviet.”

8 » Pacific Tribune, May 18, 1988