I joined President
@ZelenskyyUa and our distinguished guests today in honouring the victims of Babyn Yar.
Almost 34 thousand Jews were killed here by the Nazis in just a few days in 1941.
Nearly 100,000 Jews, Ukrainians, Roma, and people of different backgrounds were murdered here during the years of Nazi occupation.
Eighty-five years later, Babyn Yar remains a warning of what happens when hatred prevails over life. Memory therefore carries responsibility. Antisemitism, racism, attempts to erase identity, and the denial of people’s right to exist must never be treated with indifference. Evil grows when it encounters silence and impunity.
It matters deeply that representatives of Israel, Germany, and our other partners came to Kyiv today, despite Russia’s ongoing war, to remember the victims together with us.
Our responsibility is to recognise hatred and dehumanisation before they become violence, and to act before impunity makes further crimes possible.
These days remain a time of remembrance of the horrific tragedy of Babyn Yar for many people around the world. Today, government delegations from Israel and Germany came to Kyiv to honor the memory of nearly 100,000 Jews, Ukrainians, Roma, and people of different nationalities, professions, and faiths whom the Nazis murdered simply because they were different. Together with Israeli Minister Zeev Elkin, German Federal Minister Karin Prien, Chairman of the Directorate of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center Dani Dayan, government officials, rabbis, and ambassadors, we lit memorial candles beside the menorah at Babyn Yar. It is important that, despite Russia’s brutal war, our partners are able to come to Kyiv on the 85th anniversary of this tragedy to pay tribute to all the innocent victims of this terrible crime. And it is our shared duty to stand united against evil so that such tragedies never happen again.