“It’s a reminder to humanity of what xenophobia and racism lead to” – Zelenskyi honored the memory of the victims of the Babyn Yar tragedy

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi commemorates the victims of the shootings in Babyn Yar.

Today is the 79th anniversary of the terrible Babyn Yar tragedy.

"There are words scary to read. Words illustrating the infinity of human cruelty. Words that are a symbol of bestial hatred.

These are the words of announcements taped up by the Nazi occupiers in Kyiv. In them, they ordered the Jews of the city and its outskirts to arrive on September 29, 1941, at 8 o'clock in the morning, with documents, money, and linen on the corner of Melnikova and Dehtiarivska streets. And they threatened those who did not obey with execution.

Not the words themselves are spine-chilling, but the soulless actions behind them are. The Nazis killed almost 34,000 people in the next two days in the Babyn Yar ravine. And for the next two years, according to various estimates, they executed 70,000 to 200,000 people. They killed them only because they were Jews. And later, because they were Roma, Ukrainians, prisoners of war.

Deaths in Babyn Yar are thousands of destroyed human destinies. Thousands of families were slaughtered by generations. Thousands of fearful children's eyes that did not understand that they were being killed. These are thousands of reminders to the humanity of xenophobia, racism, and intolerance. And thousands of pieces of evidence, contrary to science, showing that not all people have a heart.

79 years ago, they engraved a black page in the common past of the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples. We bow down before all the victims of Babyn Yar. We have no right to forget these terrible crimes. Never again shall appear such announcements in the history of any nationality in any part of the world.

Never again!

Eternal memory to those killed in Babyn Yar!" the president wrote.