01 March 2022
As we view images emerging from Ukraine showing innocent civilians fleeing from their endangered homes and pictures of the deadly Russian attack on the vicinity of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial site, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, voices its vehement condemnation. We call on the international community to take concerted measures to safeguard civilian lives as well as these historical sites because of their irreplaceable value for research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust. Rather than being subjected to blatant violence, sacred sites like Babi Yar must be protected.
Of course, the security and wellbeing of civilians must be universally and absolutely respected. We continue to follow with grave concern the outrageous acts of aggression being perpetrated against civilian targets in Ukraine.
Yad Vashem reiterates its call to refrain from abusing and distorting the memory of the Holocaust. Babi Yar, was the site where over a two-day period in September 1941, special Nazi killing squads conducted a murderous action murdering some 33,000 Jews as part of the ideology of genocide perpetrated by the German Nazis and their collaborators. History must be remembered accurately and its moral lessons must be implemented truthfully by all.
