The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War
15 March @ 9:00 pm – 10:00 pm
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory program marking the launch of The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War.
In this conversation, Dr. Shay A. Pilnik examines how Babyn Yar—where more than 100,000 people, the vast majority Jews, were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators—has been remembered, reshaped, and at times silenced in Soviet literature and culture. Drawing on Russian and Yiddish sources, he revisits both well-known and lesser-known texts to show how Babyn Yar became a contested symbolic site, revealing the tensions between official narratives, suppressed Jewish memory, and acts of cultural resistance.
Speakers
Dr. Shay A. Pilnik
Director, Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Yeshiva University
Dr. Pilnik will discuss the central arguments of his book, focusing on memory, forgetting, and representation in Soviet responses to Babyn Yar, and the ways literature became a space for mourning, testimony, and moral reckoning.
Opening Remarks:
Dr. Arkadi Zeltser
Director, Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union
International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem
Dr. Zeltser will reflect on the historiography of Babyn Yar and its place within Soviet Holocaust history, addressing how politics, ideology, and archival silences have shaped public understanding of the site.
Guest Speaker:
Dr. Marta Havryshko
Historian and Dr. Thomas Zand Visiting Assistant Professor in Holocaust Pedagogy and Antisemitism Studies
Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University
Dr. Havryshko will speak about her research on Babyn Yar, the challenges of commemorating mass violence in contemporary Ukraine, and the ethical and political complexities involved in researching and memorialising the site today.
This programme is in partnership with the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Yeshiva University, The Zekelman Holocaust Centre, Classrooms Without Borders, the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.