No Monument: Kyiv and the Soviet Jewish Experience

• In Event: The Question of Belonging: New Perspectives on Late Soviet Jewish Emigration

Abstract

This paper will look at how and why Kyiv, Ukraine became the central site of Soviet Jewish emigration. The paper will follow how the resurfacing of Babyn (Babi) Yar memory, after two decades of repression, coincided with an emerging global consciousness of the Holocaust (especially following the trial of Adolf Eichmann in the summer of 1961). It will situate the grassroots commemorations of Babyn Yar in Kyiv to the broader revival of Jewish identity in the Soviet Union, and discuss how what happened in Kyiv influenced both the emergence of the Soviet “anti-Zionist” campaign at home and the movement to “Save Soviet Jewry” abroad.

Author

• Victoria Smolkin, Wesleyan U