KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainians refer to Vladimir Putin as “Putler,” an amalgamation of Putin and Adolf Hitler.
The label is more than a jab at Putin’s obscene lie that Russia invaded Ukraine to fight Nazis — or a reaction to Russia’s relentless bombing of civilian targets. “Putler” describes a Russian killer who is mocking the “never again” pledge Western leaders made after Hitler’s genocide against Jews and slaughter of millions of other Europeans.
My visit to the jolting Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial in Kyiv, accompanied by its former deputy CEO, Ruslan Kavatsyuk, is a moving reminder of why the term “Putler” perfectly suits this soulless man.
Kavatsyuk, a 40-year-old former journalist and a Catholic, has immersed himself for the last three years in the largely forgotten history of Ukrainian Jews.
Under gray skies in drizzling rain, we walk along a path through what is now a peaceful forest. We pass sites where 34,000 Jews from Kyiv were shot in a (now filled in) ravine over two days in September 1941 — one of the largest such massacres in Eastern Europe. Another 64,000 or so Jews, Roma people, POWs and others were killed there later.
The history of this tragedy was buried with its victims.
No memorial to Babyn Yar was built when Ukraine was under Soviet rule. The Kremlin crushed any research into the subject, and made Babyn Yar into an industrial dump site. Subsequent Ukrainian governments never undertook the project.
Few Ukrainians had heard of the 1941 massacre of Jews, until the memorial park was established over the last two years. No list of the dead had ever been compiled.
The goal of the memorial project was to do the research and bring the past to life so that a new generation could understand and avoid the recurrence of such evil.
“People didn’t understand before,” says Kavatsyuk, “that it could happen again right here, right now.”
Along our route, we pass a long wall built of coal from Ukraine’s Donbas region, which the Russians have ravaged since 2014. Quartz shards protrude from the wall, large enough to rest one’s chin on and meditate, eyes closed. Called the “Crystal Wall of Crying” it memorializes the Babyn Yar dead. Yet it is equally relevant to the Ukrainians in the Donbas whom the Russians are still murdering as I write.
We walk down a stone path to the Mirror Field, another of the several installations along the marked route. On an elevated circular platform stand 10 mirrored columns, all shimmering in the sporadic sunlight; they are shot through with 100,000 bullet holes, representing each one of the Babyn Yar dead.
In the background, a recorded female voice softly recites the names of those who were lost against the low sound of a hidden acoustic organ. The effect is surprisingly soothing and cathartic.
Before the current war, young people would come at night, sitting silently on the platform and meditating. “We thought if we uncovered the truth and people came and had compassion for all victims, this would be a universal place that stood against evil,” Kavatsyuk told me. “Then evil returned.”
One week after the invasion a Russian missile hit a TV tower near the Holocaust memorial site and destroyed one of its buildings, killing several passing civilians.
