On September 29 and 30, 1941, in one of the largest mass murders of the Holocaust, German troops massacred 33,771 Jews at the vast gorge located near Kyiv known as Babi Yar (Babij Jar). During and after the war, the territory was modified, redesigned, and converted in order to remove the physical signs of genocide, including the exhumation and incineration of thousands of bodies. In large part this erasure was the result of policies implemented by the Soviet regime, which refused to accept that there had been a “special war” against Jews.
Beginning with an explication of the mass murders and their aftermath, Antonella Salomoni examines the afterlife of a massacre whose physical remains were intentionally hidden. She focuses especially on how the arts—prose, poetry, music, architecture, and painting—shaped a collective narrative that, despite repression, played a crucial role in preserving the history and memory of the genocide.Preface
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1 Form and Truth
2 Return, Reconstruction, Recognition
3 Transforming Space
4 Acts of Justice in Poetry, Music, Prose
5 Profane, Erase, Redeem
6 Claiming the Place
Epilogue
Notes
Index
“A comprehensive study admirable for its documentation, articulation, and narrative skill. . . . An exemplary work of history.”
“[Salomoni] has long dealt with the relationship between the USSR and the Holocaust, and rebuilds in this book with rich documentation what happened in those days. Not only that: the book gives an account of the erasure of memory of this incident by the Germans and above all by the Russians, who for decades viewed what happened as a massacre of Soviet citizens, obscuring the fact that the victims were all Jews.”
![The Ashes of Babi Yar: The Massacre of Jews in Kyiv [Hardcover]](/itemImage/2/0/9/1/2_7205692.jpg "The Ashes of Babi Yar: The Massacre of Jews in Kyiv [Hardcover]")