Published: 12 June 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
A MEMORIAL PROJECT to be built at Babi Yar, where 33,771 Jews were murdered between September 29-31 in 1941 - the largest single massacre of the Holocaust - intends to turn it into the setting for an ‘immersive theatre experience’. Based on the Holocaust, visitors will take on the roles of victims and executioners.
The area, on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, was neglected until a ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the massacre on September 29, 2016. The then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko used the occasion to initiate a memorial complex.
The project stalled until 2019 when the Russian film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky was appointed as its artistic director. His plans for the site and the role of some of its funders, including Russian Jewish billionaires Mikhail Fridman and German Khan, have sparked controversy.
Khrzhanovsky was the director of the DAU cultural project, which was inspired by the life of Soviet scientist Lev Landau, a Nobel laureate. A massive artistic and scientific complex was built in Kharkiv in Ukraine, with people living on the site during 2008 to 2011 in a form of reality show cum social experiment, playing roles as Soviet citizens from Landau’s lifetime.
The project is being investigated over allegations that children’s rights were violated during filming. Further controversy was caused by the involvement as one of the ‘actors’ of Maxim Martsinkevich, a Russian neo-Nazi.
FULL STORY Controversy over Babi Yar memorial project (Jewish Chronicle)
