Zelensky, flanked by Ukrainian rabbis, marks Holocaust Remembrance Day at Babyn Yar

Ukraine’s Jewish leader says rising antisemitism must be confronted, at site where Nazis and collaborators murdered 33,771 Jews over two days in 1941

By Lazar Berman

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27 January 2026, 10:56 pm

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Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter

Illustrative: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (left) speaks at the Babyn Yar ravine near Kyiv, the site of a Nazi massacre during the Holocaust, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2026. (Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decried antisemitism at the Babyn Yar ravine outside of Kyiv, where Nazis and their collaborators murdered more than 33,000 Jews in a two-day rampage in 1941, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday.

“In this place, tens of thousands of Jews were murdered, as part of the Holocaust of European Jewry in which 6 million Jews were slaughtered,” said Zelensky, who is Jewish.

“The world has a duty to remember the promise of ‘Never Again’ and to uphold it. These are not empty words — when antisemitism is spreading across the world, we must ensure that this promise is truly kept. We must act against antisemitism,” he continued.

Zelensky was joined by Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha; the head of the president’s office, Kyrylo Budanov; and 30 foreign ambassadors.

Ukraine’s leading rabbis also attended, including Rabbi Meir Stambler, who serves as chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, and Rabbi Moshe Azman of Kyiv’s Brodsky Synagogue.

Babyn Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital, was the largest killing field of the Holocaust outside of the Nazi concentration camps, and the site of one of the bloodiest massacres of the time.

A 1944 file photo of part of the Babyn Yar ravine at the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine, where the advancing Red Army unearthed the bodies of 14,000 civilians killed by fleeing Nazis, 1944. Einsatzgruppe C was responsible for one of the most notorious massacres of the Holocaust, the shooting of nearly 34,000 at Babyn Yar, a ravine northwest of the Ukrainian city of Kiev, on Sept. 29-30, 1941. (AP Photo, file)

On September 29–30, 1941, on the eve of Yom Kippur, 33,771 Jews were murdered in just two days. During a 36-hour period, Jews of the surrounding area were ordered to march toward the ravine, where they were stripped naked, shot dead, and buried. Many of the victims, who were primarily women, children, and the elderly, were forced to lie face down on top of other bloodied corpses so their Nazi killers wouldn’t have to move them.

Over the next two years, at least 70,000 more people were murdered at the ravine, including Jews, Romanis, Ukrainian nationalists, and Soviet prisoners of war, bringing the death count to more than 100,000 people murdered there by the Germans and their local collaborators.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed across the world on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet forces of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi German death camps. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing the day as an annual commemoration.