Babi Yar

How do you make sense of a place like Babi Yar?

We stood on the edge of a perfectly normal looking ravine, filled with trees and covered in snow. It is cold. The wind is blowing. It would be cold in this place, even in Summer. But now it is bitter, and we shiver.

To get there, we walked down a long ice-covered driveway. Turned off a busy street in town to get to the driveway. Walked past buildings. In plain site. Questions arise. How do you not notice 33,711 people tromping along this path over the course of two days? Carrying suitcases. Families.

How do you not hear the 33,711 gunshots ring out in this ravine, situated inside the city, not in some far off forest where the winds do not carry the sound. People lived a few hundred meters from this ravine.

They heard the sounds. They saw the people. They knew.

In two days, they died. 33,711 of layed down, stripped naked, one on top of the other, face down. Shot in the back of the head. It is horrible to write these words. But it happened and we need to remember Reveka Bachrach, and the others who died in this place.

So, we stood there in the cold and we read. We read names of Reveka’s neighbors. We read Reveka’s name. And, we shed a tear.

There are many ravines just like this one in my hometown. As children, we played in the ravines, running up and down the slopes, branches snapping against us as we ran. Getting thoroughly, and joyfully, muddy in the process. Ravines were a place to play. And, here I stood on the edge of a different kind of ravine in the heart of big city Kiev. Very different kind of ravine.

When I arrived in Jerusalem, I placed a small prayer for Reveka Bachrach in the Wall. She is not forgotten.