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Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration

Participants in the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Participants in the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Participants in the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Naama Shik lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Naama Shik lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Naama Shik lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Arkadi Zeltser lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Arkadi Zeltser lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Arkadi Zeltser lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Iael Nidam-Orvieto lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Iael Nidam-Orvieto lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Iael Nidam-Orvieto lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

The Atar Trio and singer Ye’ela Avital taking part in the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

The Atar Trio and singer Ye’ela Avital taking part in the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

The Atar Trio and singer Ye’ela Avital taking part in the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Prof. Dan Michman, the Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research

Prof. Dan Michman, the Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research

Prof. Dan Michman, the Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research

Dr. Leah Prais lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Leah Prais lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Dr. Leah Prais lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Prof. Dina Porat lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Prof. Dina Porat lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

Prof. Dina Porat lecturing at the symposium on "Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration". Yad Vashem, 28 September 2016

“The murder by bullets, mostly in forests and thickets close to the homes of the victims, marked the beginning of the ‘Final Solution.’” So emphasized Yad Vashem Historian Prof. Dina Porat in her opening lecture at a symposium held on 28 September to mark 75 years since the mass murders of some 50,000 Jews at the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kiev. The symposium was entitled “Killing Sites in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR: History and Commemoration,” and was organized by the Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research. According to Prof. Porat, the brutal and primitive methods that characterize the mass murders of Jews in the Soviet Union were the precursor to the industrialized murders by gas that followed in the death camps. The fact that dozens of years after the end of the Shoah only sluggish research had been conducted into the events that occurred in the Soviet Union during WWII was in great part due to the difficulty in accessing related documentation in Soviet archives. Only with the opening of the archives at the beginning of the 1990s and the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of such documentation did a significant change occur. This paved the way for Yad Vashem’s online research project “The Untold Stories: The Murder Sites of the Jews in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR.”

At the symposium, Dr. Lea Prais, who heads the project, gave a fascinating insight into studies conducted on the topic over recent years, focusing on the lesser-known killing sites and the dearth of personal material remaining from that period – mostly a few photographs and a handful of letters written by those fated for murder. Based on “The Untold Stories,” the first comprehensive study of the efforts to commemorate the Shoah by Soviet Jewry after the war has also been conducted, collated and edited by Mirilashvili Center Director Dr. Arkadi Zeltser. Dr. Zeltser has examined hundreds of memorials erected by Jews in the FSU from the late 1940s onwards, and found that the image of “silent Judaism,” as Prof. Elie Wiesel z”l coined the Jews of the USSR, does not relate to the findings on the ground in this aspect. On the contrary, despite the complex Soviet reality, Jews made every effort to give expression to the Jewish people’s unique tragedy – the Shoah in the Soviet Union.

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