Several Jewish organizations expressed their outrage after Russia carried out a bombing near the site of the Nazi massacre of Babi Yar in Kiev.
On Tuesday, the Russian army bombed the Kiev television tower, near the site of Babi Yar, a mass grave containing the remains of some 34,000 Jews, massacred in two days when the city was occupied by the Nazis, in 1941.
The Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, considered this Wednesday that, with this bombing, Russia was seeking to “erase” Ukrainian history.
The memorial, a park located a kilometer from the television tower, was not directly hit by the bombing.
Expressing its “strong condemnation”, the Israeli Shoah memorial Yad Vashem urged “the international community to take concerted action to safeguard both civilian lives and historic sites, for their irreplaceable value for research, education and the commemoration of the Shoah.” Holocaust”.
“Rather than subjecting them to blatant violence, holy sites like Babi Yar must be protected,” the organization added in a statement issued Tuesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24 a military operation in Ukraine to defend the separatists in the east of the country and “demilitarize and denazify” his neighbor, governed by a pro-Western Executive.
“Putin seeks to distort and manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign and democratic country, and that is absolutely abhorrent,” Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Babi Yar memorial advisory council, said in a statement Tuesday.
The Ukrainian leader, Volodimir Zelenski, of Jewish confession, accused Moscow on Wednesday of wanting to “erase” Ukraine and its history and called on the Jews “not to remain silent”.
Babi Yar -also known as “Babyn Yar”- was the scene of mass executions until 1943. Up to 100,000 people were murdered there, including Jews, Gypsies, resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners.
