Ukraine marks 75 years since Nazi slaughter of Jews at Babi Yar

A somber Ukraine marks 75 years since the Nazis slaughtered 34,000 Jews on the outskirts of Kiev during one of the worst single massacres of the Holocaust.

President Reuven Rivlin was meant to join a memorial ceremony led by Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko and attended by other global dignitaries, but Rivlin cuts short his visit due to the death of Shimon Peres — although not before drawing criticism for “undiplomatic” comments about Ukrainians’ role in the Babi Yar slaughter.

Students in Ukraine commemorate the 75th anniversary of Babi Yar #throughtestimony. https://t.co/Z7XhVErU0i pic.twitter.com/MMKtD4CMVW

— USC Shoah Foundation (@USCShoahFdn) September 29, 2016

Poroshenko tries to calm the air by stressing that “there have been those [in Ukraine] for which one felt shame. And this, too, cannot be erased from our collective memory.

“No Ukrainian has the right to forget this tragedy,” he tells a commemoration at which children played a mournful concert before blue skeletal statues honoring the victims.

German President Joachim Gauck tells the thousands gathered under two giant white tents that the Nazis “even used nationalist Ukrainians as assistant police.”

“But we also admit that not only special fences [of death camps], but ordinary Wehrmacht [soldiers] were involved in these crimes,” Gauck says.

https://twitter.com/TheAnkaraTimes/status/781519394878939137

— AFP