Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center

Between 1941 and 1943, the Nazis shot between 70,000 and 100,000 people at Babyn Yar, including almost the entire Jewish population of Kyiv, making it a significant point on the devastating map of the Holocaust. In order to acquire, study and disseminate knowledge about this tragedy, an international foundation was established to support the creation of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. This non-governmental organization is building the first modern Holocaust museum in Eastern Europe, establishing a center for the study of the tragedy, in which large-scale scientific and educational activities will be carried out.

The Memorial Center will bring together a museum, research institutes, a library, an archive and an online multimedia platform. First the Center’s focus is the development of online projects dedicated to biographies of victims of the Babyn Yar tragedy, creation of a visual archive, and the comprehensive study of the distant and recent past of this territory. In undertaking these activities, the Memorial Center maintains an open dialogue with Ukrainian society and pays special attention to the public discussion of the tragedy and the formation of a humanistic moral judgment on it.

The nucleus of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center will be the Museum, the construction of which will begin in the near future. At the end of 2020, the concept of the future museum was presented. During 2021, the detailed architectural concept design was developed. The opening of the museum was planned in 2025/26.

However, in connection with the Russian military aggression against Ukraine, BYHMC postponed all offline projects, including the construction of memorial objects in Babyn Yar. The focus is now on online initiatives related to preventing and combating all forms of genocide, protecting human and civil rights and preserving the memory of the victims of Russian-Ukrainian war.

On 25 October, 2022 during a meeting with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Members of BYHMC Supervisory Board, the Head of State noted, that it is extremely important now to pay even more attention to the protection of historical memory and informing about the conclusions humanity has drawn from the large-scale tragedies of the 20th century. That is why the project of BYHMC has to be implemented after the end of the war in Ukraine.

Since the beginning of the war the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center has been actively working in the 3 following areas: humanitarian aid to the Holocaust survivors, righteous and Ukrainian people, war projects and Holocaust projects.

Concerning the humanitarian aid and social assistance, BYHMC created a coordination team to help the Righteous and the Holocaust survivors. 40 people have been evacuated to safe places and more than 80 families receive support. Furthermore BYHMC purchased medicines for 1400 people, provided 540 people with medical assistance, delivered 16000 food sets in 87 localities (within the Susidy program) and redirected part of the BYHMC funding for purchasing 7 armored ambulances. The Viсtor Pinchuk Foundation, with the support of BYHMC, provided 8 front-line medical institutions with transport incubators with ventilators. BYHMC also purchased protective membranes to preserve cultural monuments in Kyiv and cooperated with the Department of Cultural Heritage Protection.

BYHMC now continues to develop partnership agreements in different areas of cooperation. Already developed are: a Partnership Memorandum with the State Archives Service of Ukraine regarding archives digitalization, a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, a cooperation agreement with Yad Vashem within the project Names, a cooperation agreement with the Federal Archives of Germany (Bundesarchiv), a Partnership Memorandum with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine regarding informing about the Holocaust in Ukraine and Europe and a cooperation agreement with Yahad - In Unum concerning the investigation of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

The funding of the Memorial Center is carried out on the principles of equal participation of Ukrainian and international donors. As of 2020, the organization has 6 donors: 3 citizens of Ukraine, 2 citizens with citizenship of the Russian Federation and Israel, 1 U.S. citizen. For 2021, it is planned to attract funds from a wide range of international donors on the basis of fundraising.

In June 2020, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center was included in the Transparency Register (Transparency Register) of the European Union. The Register cooperates with the European Parliament and the European Commission. The inclusion of the Memorial Center in this register means that the organization’s interests are visible, its budgeting is transparent and that citizens and interest groups are provided with an opportunity to track its activities.

The Foundation is meant to offer the EU-based point of contact/donation to such donors etc. in addition to BYHMC.

The Board consists of prominent public figures, philanthropists, politicians and cultural figures. It oversees the work of the Foundation and the Memorial Center and advises the Board of Directors in their discussions and key decisions.

Since the beginning of Russian invasion to Ukraine the following members have left the Supervisory Board: Mykhailo Fridman, Herman Khan, Iryna Bokova. In May 2022, Leonid Kravchuk has passed away.

The Public Council is an advisory board created to facilitate broader discussion of Memorial Center activities and to maintain an ongoing dialogue between the Foundation and Ukrainian society. The Public Council includes well-known representatives of Ukrainian civil society who share the Foundation’s mission and goals. Its main purpose is to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the tragedy of Babyn Yar.

The Academic Council aims to develop a research strategy for the Memorial Center and monitor the compliance of the Center's activities with the principles of scientific rigor and reliability.

Foundation Babyn Yar (Foundation) was created in support of BYHMC operating in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Next up is the goal to preserve the Memorial Center and the team, enlist support of the state (partnership projects, media communications, events), strengthen the Supervisory Board with the representatives of state and public institutions and strengthen the Donors' Council that will allow the BYHMC to continue implementing the project.

Materials about the tragedy, the history of the place, the current state of Babyn Yar and the attitude of society towards crimes against humanity are being collected, processed and will be presented to the public in the Museum. The purpose of the museum collection is to serve the needs of exhibition, research, and educational work. The main goal is to create the largest collection of materials and artifacts related to the Holocaust tragedy in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. These are all originals that convey historical truth. The goal of the collection is not just to demonstrate these tragic events, but also to serve as a visual testimony and proof to fight Holocaust denial. The work of the Memorial Center is based on strict scientific knowledge. Historical materials undergo independent review and are approved by the Scientific Council which consists of 3 prominent experts from different countries. The principles of working with the past are enshrined in a document entitled "The Historical Narrative" which is available to all.

The collection is clustered around several major themes. In general, all personal belongings of those who died, survived, fought for memory, or those who stood aside as —all the exhibits tell a story or share an experience; it is these exhibits that constitute the basis of the museum's collection.

The Library of the Memorial Center will be the largest collection of textual testimonials about the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, and will serve as an international research center. It will offer digital and physical access to all the modern research databases and media archives available at Babyn Yar and our partner organizations. The library will also display a unique compilation of hundreds of personal libraries that belonged to prominent scientists, cultural figures, dissidents, and also ordinary people of that time, so that visitors can see what books people of that period read.

The Library searches, stores and provides open access to materials about Babyn Yar and other crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War on the territory of Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe. Another major theme for material and document collection is the ruined pre-war world of Jewish life and culture in multinational and multifaith Ukraine and Kyiv.

In dialogue with the Foundation, the Architecture Advisory Board has established a set of architectural principles that should inform and guide the development of the museum to come.

• the building should not disturb the ground;
• natural elements present on site itself should be used as primary building materials;
• a monumental, historical form should lead to an immersive experience;
• visitors should be able to explore the museum as they want and create a personal narrative.

With these principles, BYHMC has engaged architects from all over the world in dialogue to inquire what it might mean to implement them on site. Architects Jan de Vylder and Inge Vinck proposed to strategically dismantle an abandoned and unfinished building on site—the psychiatric hospital extension—brick-by-brick, and use them for the construction of the new museum. Architect Philippe Rahm noted the abundance of life that has grown on the site since the massacre of 1941 and proposed to intensify this process through the use of greenhouses to create Gardens of Eden. Landscape architect Gunther Vogt proposed to use soil from the site and, perhaps mixing it with earth from Jerusalem, create new bricks to be used in walkways or structures, reviving the history of the brick factory that caused the 1961 mudslide. Watson Salembier proposed to re-sacralize the site, firstly by bringing the ancient streams of Babyn Yar back up to the surface.

The purpose is not only to plan a museum, research center, and site intervention, but also to intervene and view the site itself as a museum or center. In other words, a whole environment with stations, in which you can organize paths, trails, walks and discoveries. The holistic approach to the design of the building, the exposition and the site will be developed in dialogue with representatives of the different fields of knowledge, arts and different social groups. Environmentally friendly materials will be used in the construction; the basic principle is to take a sensitive approach to the natural and urban environment.

All construction projects are frozen as long as the war continues. There are still two important projects for museum spaces in Babyn Yar - The Mound of Memory and The Jewish Cemetery office house, which have to be implemented after the end of the war.

The archive is an open storage structure where linked data tools are used, and digitization is not selective, but covers the whole set of documents. The goal is to collect the largest database of Holocaust related documents and to expand this to other Eastern European countries.

The digital library contains only reliable sources of information. Available in the library are more than 4 000 paper books, of which more than a hundred are rare and old, about 250 digital and electronic editions, 8 000 photographs from different times, including hundreds previously unseen, video evidence, drawings, audio recordings, databases of full-text scientific publications and much more. Different media are grouped into thematic collections to ensure a comprehensive historical narrative.

Various war projects are ongoing. “Closed Eyes” is a digital (www.closedeyes.org) is a digital memorial that aims to create complete and verified martyrology of the civilian victims of the Russian-Ukrainian war, to keep the memory of murdered people and communicate worldwide about the unthinkable genocide of Ukrainians in the 21st century. Over the years BYHMC has developed a unique methodology and expertise in data analysis combination, confirmed by a global partnership, and an exceptional system for collecting, analyzing, and evaluating data. There are already 2,500 names of victims and their biographies collected in 2022. visitors The first lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska supported the project as well as it got the wide media coverage. The plan is to bring the project to the national level and sign a Memorandum with the Institute of National Remembrance and Ministry of Culture of Ukraine to consolidate the data of a unique martyrology in the country and verificate with state registers.

A second war project is “The Russian War Crimes Project: Gathering Evidence” (in partnership with Father Patrick Desbois and Yahad - In Unum). The ongoing war has many signs of war crimes and genocide. Unfortunately the evidences of this are mostly collected by the actors with the lack of completeness, accuracy, and data protection. BYHMC has started to collect and document evidences as well. The goal is to collect unique interviews that will help to bring war criminals to justice and prevent all forms of genocide. The project is developed by the international team of experts in human rights, managers, historians and researchers and has already yielded 80+ interviews with witnesses of Russian war crimes. The team already collected and structured information on 2,694 cases of war crimes in the Evidence database with detailed descriptions. There have also been professional meetings with state authorities - the Office of the President, the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor General's Office.

Due to the war in Ukraine, archives can be damaged or destroyed. Almost 550 crimes committed against cultural heritage in Ukraine have been recorded by the fall of 2022. As a third war project, it is important to speed up all the efforts to digitize archives while they exist. Every day military attacks in Ukraine bring a high risk of irretrievable loss. Over the years, BYHMC has already created the largest online archive in Eastern Europe, that includes more than 2 million documents.

Despite the ongoing Russian military aggression against Ukraine, Holocaust projects are still carried out. Despite the circumstances in 2022, BYHMC’s scientists identified 156 unknown names of Babyn Yar victims and added more than 500 names to the database on the website. More than 1000 appeals from various countries were received from descendants who lost relatives in Babyn Yar. Four books were published, including “Auschwitz” by Laurence Rees, “World War II: Behind Closed Doors”, scientific work “Songs of the Holocaust”. All research teams are also continuing to work. Aside from representing itself on international conferences, The BYHMC and the House of European History also initiated a partnership project to popularize knowledge about the Memorial's activities among the European audience. HEH published materials about war projects as well as about architectural objects of the complex, which are threatened with destruction due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.