Statement by President von der Leyen on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January sends a powerful global message. Across the world, leaders, communities and individuals reinforce their commitment to honoring the victims of humanity’s darkest hour. However, in bowing its collective head in commemoration, the world too often remembers those who perished as one, generic collective. 27^th January marks the liberation of Auschwitz, the ultimate symbol of Nazi horror. Yet not all Holocaust victims met their fate in concentration camps. Far from it. Now more than ever, the time has come to tell the whole Holocaust story, writes Natan Sharansky (pictured, below). 

In paying tribute to the six million murdered, we must comprehend that they represent six million unique lives, each their own individual world. Remembering the Holocaust means remembering each and every victim in their own right. We are duty-bound to tell as many of their distinctive stories as possible. Unfortunately, too many of them remain unknown.

None more so perhaps than the tragedy of Babyn Yar. Just days after occupying Kyiv in September 1941, the Nazis ordered the city’s Jews to assemble. Over a two-day period, they were marched to the nearby Babyn Yar ravine, where around 34,000 were cruelly shot dead. Eventually, Nazi firing squads murdered around 100,000 individuals including Ukrainians, Roma and others at the site. The Babyn Yar massacre annihilated Kyiv’s Jewish community. It became the blueprint for similar mass shootings across Eastern Europe. The Jews of Riga, Minsk, Vilnius and elsewhere met the same tragic fate, murdered in killing fields near their homes. In total, around 1.5 million Jews fell victim to the ‘Holocaust by bullets.’

This wholesale destruction of Jewish communities was a gruesome precursor to the industrial murder of cattle carts and gas chambers. The body-filled pits and ravines of Eastern Europe demonstrated to the Nazis that the Jewish People really could be eradicated, that genocide was possible.

Yet, this key chapter of the Nazis ‘Final Solution’, no less tragic than Auschwitz, remains largely unknown. As I learned through bitter personal experience, the post-World War Two Soviet regime did everything possible to suppress Jewish identity and to erase the Holocaust from our collective memory. The Soviet worldview rejected national, ethnic or religious affiliation. As such, they deliberately portrayed Babyn Yar as a crime against the Soviet people and physically buried the truth by building highways, housing, a sports center over what is Europe’s largest mass grave, even attempting to turn it into a municipal waste site.

Although independent Ukraine has attempted to rectify this injustice, Babyn Yar continues to largely evade the historical narrative. A recent survey by the Abba Eban Institute for International Diplomacy at IDC Herzliya, examined attitudes towards Babyn Yar and Holocaust memory. Worryingly, it found that even in Israel, where the Holocaust features so prominently in the public consciousness, where it is pivotal to school curricula, just 33 per cent of 18-29 year-olds could place the Babyn Yar massacre as having occurred during World War Two. Meanwhile, across all demographics, just 28 per cent of Israelis know that more than one million Jews were shot dead during the Holocaust. In a parallel survey in Ukraine, where the horrors of Babyn Yar unfolded, the figure was even lower at 16 per cent.

Now is the time to redress the balance – and there is no time to lose. 75 per cent of those surveyed made the sad and worrying observation that Holocaust memory is fading, even in Israel. 68 per cent expressed the same sentiment in Ukraine. Clearly, perpetuating the precious memory of the Holocaust is becoming increasingly challenging. Those who survived, the witnesses to unparalleled evil, are dwindling in number. Their first-hand testimony, etched into the minds of so many people, will soon be a thing of the past.

Thankfully, significant efforts are already being made to ensure that the victims of Babyn Yar and similar mass shootings will be firmly entrenched in the annals of history. The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, whose Supervisory Board I proudly head, is dedicated to perpetuating the memory of Babyn Yar unlike ever before. Not only is a world-class museum being developed, but crucial research and education projects are already underway. New names of victims have been uncovered and details of their lives have been restored. Previously unknown stories of Ukrainians who saved their Jewish neighbors have been discovered. A forgotten world, shrouded in darkness, is seeing light once again.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is the perfect opportunity to consider how we remember mankind’s unmatched descent into evil. Across the world, we will pledge “Never Again” and we will mean it. Yet, if we truly wish to keep Holocaust memory alive, we must first know our history. It starts by understanding that the Holocaust did not begin and end at Auschwitz. There are many Holocaust stories to be told. Now is the time to tell them.

Natan Sharansky is a former prisoner of Zion and served as an Israeli government minister.