12 September 2006
Government delegations from 40 countries are expected to attend a Holocaust memorial event in Kiev later this month, its organizer, Moshe Kantor, has said. It remains unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the event marking the 65th anniversary of the Nazi massacre in Babi Yar, Kantor was by JTA quoted as saying. He is the president of the Russian Jewish Congress and chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Jewish Congress. Kantor pointed out that one of the major goals of the commemoration would be to educate the younger generation about the Jews’ wartime tragedy. “Youth of the world is not informed about what happened in Kiev in September of 1941,” he said. Part of Kantor's aim in holding the event is also to reclaim the site of the killings, which took place in a forest on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. He said children now played soccer on the mass graveyard. “This game of soccer should be stopped.” According to the Nazis' own reports, at least 33,771 Jews from Kiev and its suburbs were killed at Babi Yar on 29/30 September 1941. They were systematically shot dead by machine gun fire. As many as 60,000 more people, including Roma and Soviet POWs were later killed at the site.
