Bitter War of Memory

The Babyn Yar Massacre, Aftermath, and Commemoration

Victoria Khiterer

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781626711136, 9781626711129
• eBook ISBN: 9781626711143
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

Bitter War of Memory: The Babyn Yar Massacre, Aftermath, and Commemoration discusses the Holocaust in Kyiv and the efforts to memorialize the Babyn Yar massacre. Babyn Yar is one of the largest Holocaust sites in the Soviet Union and modern Ukraine, where the Nazis and their collaborators killed virtually all the Jews who remained in the city during the occupation.

After the war, Soviet ideology suppressed commemoration of the Holocaust, instead conceptualizing the universal suffering of the Soviet people during the war. Police dispersed unauthorized commemoration meetings of Jewish activists at Babyn Yar. A monument "for one hundred thousand citizens of Kyiv and prisoners of the war" was erected in Babyn Yar in 1976, but the Holocaust was not mentioned in its inscription.

With the collapse of communism, state anti-Semitism ended. Holocaust commemoration became an important part of national memory politics in independent Ukraine. In the last few decades, over thirty monuments have been built at Babyn Yar, which are dedicated to the memory of Jews, Roma, members of the resistance movement, and other people executed there. However, heated debates continue about the commemoration of the Babyn Yar massacre.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Maps
• Introduction
• 1 Kyivan Jews in the Interwar Period
• 2 The Babyn Yar Massacre: The Holocaust of Jews in Kyiv
• 3 Other Victims of the Nazi Regime in Kyiv
• 4 Jewish Life and Anti-Semitism in Postwar Kyiv
• 5 Aftermath of the Babyn Yar Massacre
• 6 Broken Silence over Babyn Yar
• 7 Babyn Yar Commemoration in Independent Ukraine
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author