Babi Yar: a Slaughter, a Poem and a Symphony

Babi Yar, a ravine near Kyiv in the Ukraine, was the site of one of the most horrific events of the Holocaust in World War II. Over the course of two days, September 29-30, 1941 nearly 34,000 Jews were murdered en masse and buried in a common grave. Later on Soviet POWs, communists, Ukrainian nationalists and Roma were also murdered at the same site. There were a total of between 100,000 and 150,000 killed at the site during the German occupation. It is useful to recall exactly why the Nazi regime was so horrific, especially these days when a politician might be accused of being a Nazi for having a different fiscal, monetary or social welfare policy from the mainstream.

For many years Babi Yar was mostly unknown as the Soviet authorities did not publicize it. In 1961 the Soviet Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko published a poem commemorating the event. Wikipedia discusses it as follows:

In 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko published his poem Babiyy Yar in a leading Russian periodical, in part to protest the Soviet Union's refusal to recognize Babi Yar as a Holocaust site. The poem's first line is "Nad Babim Yarom pamyatnikov nyet" ("There are no monuments over Babi Yar.") The anniversary of the massacre was still observed in the context of the "Great Patriotic War" throughout the 1950s and 60s; the code of silence about what it meant for the Jews was broken only in 1961, with the publication of Yevtushenko's Babiyy Yar, in Literaturnaya Gazeta. The poet denounced both Soviet historical revisionism and still-common anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union of 1961. "[I]t spoke not only of the Nazi atrocities, but also of the Soviet government's own persecution of Jewish people." Babiyy Yar first circulated as samizdat (unofficial publications without state sanction.)

Here is an English translation of the poem:

Babi Yar by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Translated by Ben Okopnik

No monument stands over Babi Yar.

A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.

I am afraid.

Today, I am as old

As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.

I wander o'er the roads of ancient Egypt

And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured

And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. 

The Philistines betrayed me - and now judge.

I'm in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,

I'm persecuted, spat on, slandered, and

The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills

Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok 

Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,

The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded

And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I'm thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,

In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,

To jeers of "Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!"

My mother's being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you

Are international, by inner nature.

But often those whose hands are steeped in filth

Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.

How vile, that without the slightest quiver

The antisemites have proclaimed themselves

The "Union of the Russian People!"

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,

Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,

And I'm in love, and have no need of phrases,

But only that we gaze into each other's eyes.

How little one can see, or even sense!

Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,

But much is still allowed - very gently

In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-"They come!"

-"No, fear not - those are sounds

Of spring itself. She's coming soon.

Quickly, your lips!"

-"They break the door!"

-"No, river ice is breaking..."

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,

The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.

Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,

I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream

Above the thousands of thousands interred,

I'm every old man executed here,

As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.

May "Internationale" thunder and ring 

When, for all time, is buried and forgotten

The last of antisemites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that's blood of mine,

But, hated with a passion that's corrosive

Am I by antisemites like a Jew.

And that is why I call myself a Russian!

* * *

In an equally courageous act the composer Dmitri Shostakovich one year later, in 1962, composed his Symphony No. 13 using texts from the Yevtushenko poem and other poems by him critical of life in the Soviet Union. For this reason it is nicknamed "Babi Yar." Shostakovich grew more and more interested in Jewish subjects and we can find many other instances in his later work. An example is his song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry composed in 1948. Here is Riccardo Muti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with soloist Alexey Tikhomirov in a 2018 performance.