Voldymyr Zelensky: Ukrainian President Visits Babyn Yar Memorial on Anniversary of 1941 Massacre

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Voldymyr Zelensky: Ukrainian President Visits…

BABYN YAR 2

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky took part in a memorial ceremony at the site of one of the most horrific single mass murders of the Holocaust. In 1941, the Nazis shot more than 30,000 Jewish men, women, and children — plus members of other groups — over a two-day period. The event took place at Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), a ravine outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. At the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial, President Zelensky -– who is Jewish — laid flowers at the monument to the victims of the tragedy and placed a commemorative lamp next to the Menorah in honor of the Jews, Roma, and Ukrainians who were murdered.
— The Jerusalem Post

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“Any inhumane regimes pose a threat to all humanity. Criminals who cause such tragedies must be punished so that dictators and tyrants are reluctant to repeat something similar in the future,” Zelensky declared.
— The Jerusalem Post

Learn more about Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) from Wikipedia. ►

Learn more about Voldymyr Zelensky from Wikipedia. ►

Read ” Zelensky visits Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial on 81st anniversary” ►

Watch “Babi Yar” [5:10]. ►

Photo: Newsweek

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Quotable

“[T]he foundations for extremism usually are held in check by various restraints. Societies are not liberal, moderate, progressive, and free because almost all their citizens – let alone their politicians — are liberal, moderate, progressive or committed to the freedoms of others.

“But societies consistently avoid extremism when the infrastructures of freedom are strong: when key institutions and norms encourage a more decent, rights-respective, lawful politics; when powerful social movements and independent media hold leaders to account, expose rather than reinforce political fantasies, and champion the rights of the vulnerable; and when information is produced and scrutinized by scholars, civil servants, and non-governmental organizations devoid of either government repression or vested interests.

“Yet no infrastructure is rigidly immovable, and once key components are eroded and weakened, once sections of the political and cultural elite attempt to mobilize the foundations of extremism, the system of restraints can swiftly collapse.

“While genocide on the scale of the Holocaust is historically exceptional, its central lesson is that the broader danger of extreme atrocities is not. In the words of the great historian Ian Kershaw, the Holocaust ‘lit a warning beacon that still burns brightly: it showed how a modern, advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity… It showed what we are capable of.’ Only by rejecting false narratives of conflict and polarization, and maintaining systems of rights and freedoms for all, can we hope to prevent that capability from once more becoming a reality.”

— Jonathan Leader Maynard in his incisive article “Could It Happen Here?: The Holocaust and Atrocities in the 21st Century” To read the entire article, click here.