I’m renting the apartment in Kyiv near Dorohozhychi metro station where the notorious place is located. Today I have some time to walk there in daylight. The place of the massacre during world war two is now a huge site with several monuments separated by Illienka street.
On one side of the road, there is a park with a huge Soviet-era monument
However, the place itself looks rather abandoned. By in opposite sides of the square, there are two monuments, for Ukrainian nationalist Olena Teliha who thought that the Nazis regime will help them to build an independent state but was wrong, and for Tatiana Marcus who had not any illusion and succeeded in poisoning the german SS officers while she was working in the dining room. Both of them were captured and killed in this place.
It’s interesting that in the Soviet Union they didn’t want to draw much attention to the events here and decided to build their roads and houses, but they built a Dam to keep away the Siretc River with some errors and it collapsed in 60s killing another thousand of people. After it the site as we see it now appeared to commemorate victims of Nazi’s crimes.
On the other side of the road, monuments are more contemporary and more emotional. I was stunned to see a little girl with broken toys around her and people put around the real toys. I’m not very sensitive, but tears appeared in my eyes
The next stop I’ve made near the monument of killed Romani people. The cart with bullet holes is done well and it’s interesting that now we are willing to get rid once again of that annoying Jehovah’s Witnesses, Romani people, Polish border officers are using water pumps against Iraq and Siria refuge. Look’s like we are losing this sense of human life again.
The next place has the name Trees of Life and it’s a huge metal platform with pillars on it. Inside the platform, there are speakers that play low-frequency music, and a woman’s voice is reading the names of the victims slaughtered there. It’s a very strange feeling walking there, feeling of insecurity and sorrow.
And the last stop was at the Holocaust memorial. Among all the victim’s the most people there were Jews. No surprise that the monument is also rather emotional. Near the Jew’s candles, there is a portion of synagogue reproduces where visitors could pray or just think trying to contemplate all the background of this tragic place. Speakers around the monument are playing a recording of a religious ceremony. There is also a wall of grieve nearby connecting place with the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
After it, the darkness came to Kyiv and I went back home thinking about ideas that could bring to life so much suffering and tragic events. It looks like the Ukrainian government pays much attention to this site and there are construction works that took place on-site. I think that it’s a good approach to think about World War Two. Not to ride tanks in the city center and tell that “we could repeat”, but show the consequences of all that political games to make sure that such things would never happen again.