World
Ukraine Holocaust memorial damaged by missile strike
The monument is dedicated to the around 15,000 Jews who were murdered outside Kharkiv in Ukraine's northeast
March 9, 2023 14:38
The monument is dedicated to the around 15,000 Jews who were murdered outside Kharkiv in Ukraine's northeast
March 9, 2023 14:38It was erected as a monument to around 15,000 Jews murdered in a ravine a few miles outside Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv by Nazi occupying forces during the Second World War. But in March last year Drobytsky Yar became an unexpected symbol of the current war when it was struck and damaged by artillery fire.
When a photograph of it appeared on social media, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba immediately lashed out at Russia, asking: “Why does Russia keep attacking Holocaust memorials in Ukraine? I expect Israel to strongly condemn this barbarism.”
Last week the JC became the first newspaper to reach the scene which has been off-limits to the media because, apparently, it lies close to sensitive Ukrainian military positions. Not even the city’s rabbi, Rabbi Moshe Moskovitz, has been able to get permission to visit.
We got there by arriving impromptu at a checkpoint and spotting the gaunt branches of the monument in the distance. A soldier agreed to walk with us to it, along paths he said had been checked for any unexploded ordnance.We could see that two of the six arms of the blackened menorah-shaped monument have been lopped off by the missile or missiles, making it appear even more gaunt.
The menorah was represented with six arms to symbolise the six million Holocaust victims.
Debris at the foot of the memorial after the missile strike
During the JC’s short visit we saw twisted a rocket or missile casing alongside the shrapnel-pockmarked monument. It was impossible for us to determine whether it was a Russian or Ukrainian strike, though the United Jewish Community of Ukraine issued a statement blaming Russian artillery. There is no evidence the strike intentionally targeted the monument.
The massacre scene was marked in the days of the USSR, but the Soviet regime failed to refer to the victims as Jews, just calling them “Soviet citizens” — similarly to the way Kyiv’s Babyn Yar victims were described during the communist era.
Babyn Yar menorah (Getty Images)
