On September 29, 2016, President of Ukraine
Petro Poroshenko, together with public figures and philanthropists, initiated the creation of the first Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. Poroshenko himself and the Mayor of Kyiv,
Vitali Klitschko, were present at the ceremony. On March 19, 2017, the Supervisory Board of the Memorial was founded. The Supervisory Board is headed by the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel
Natan Sharansky and consists of philanthropists
German Khan,
Mikhail Fridman,
Victor Pinchuk, and
Pavel Fuks, the chief rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine
Yakov Dov Bleich, artist
Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, world heavyweight champion
Volodymyr Klitschko, the former Director-General of
UNESCO Irina Bokova, former President of Poland
Alexander Kwasniewski, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany
Joschka Fischer. On October 19, 2017, the leadership of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center met with the Prime Minister of Ukraine
Volodymyr Groysman. The Prime Minister expressed support for the project to build a memorial complex in Kyiv to commemorate the victims of Babyn Yar, and noted the importance of preserving historical memory in order to prevent the recurrence of past mistakes in the future. On 6 October 2021, following the 80th anniversary of the massacre, the Memorial Center released the first 161 names of Nazi soldiers who were perpetrators of the crimes at Babyn Yar. It described the release of names as the first installment of ongoing research into those who committed the murder of 33,771 Ukrainian Jews on September 29 and 30, 1941. From February 2017 to January 2020, the dutch historian and
holocaust researcher Karel C. Berkhoff was the project's chief historian. Due to unagreed, authoritarian changes to the project, such as the introduction of a senior artistic director,
Ilya Khrzhanovsky, and what Berkhoff considered an increasingly insensitive approach to history through “smart guiding” generated by facial recognition and personal questionnaires to create virtual realities "in which visitors find themselves in the roles of victims, collaborators, Nazis, and prisoners of war who were forced to burn corpses," Berkhoff distanced himself from the project and declined to renew his contract. Berkhoff also criticized a film project by Khrzhanovsky involving orphans who were apparently mentally disabled and at least one case of sexual abuse.
Russian neo-Nazis also participated in the film as amateur actors. On April 27, 2020, curator Dieter Bogner joined in, followed by eight others in early May, who criticized the “psychological experiments” in an open letter. On 1 March 2022, the site of Babyn Yar was hit by Russian missiles and shells during the (part of the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine)
battle of Kyiv, killing at least five people. Ukrainian president
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and
Andriy Yermak, chairman of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, condemned the missile attack, as did Israeli leaders including Foreign Minister
Yair Lapid and
Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai.
Ynet journalist
Ron Ben Yishai reported that Babyn Yar remained unscathed after the Russian attack. In a February 2023 interview, art director of the Babyn Yar Memorial Foundation
Ilya Khrzhanovsky mentioned that German Khan and Mikhail Fridman (at the time both under
sanctions due to their alleged role in the 2022 Russian invasion) had withdrawn from the project and that
Ronald Lauder had recently become a major donor. Khrzhanovsky himself resigned from the project on 5 September 2023. ==See also==