Reps of UOC-KP and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church conduct memorial service in Babyn Yar
On September 29, 2010, the 70th anniversary of the beginning of mass executions of peaceful civilians and military captives by the Nazis in Babyn Yar in Kyiv was marked.
The victims included Jews, Gypsies, prisoners of war from the nearby Syretskyi Concentration Camp. Many Ukrainian patriots were killed in Babyn Yar for their connection to the nationalistic underground. The most well known of them was a poet and public figure, Olena Teliha.
In total, over 100 thousand people died in Babyn Yar. It became one of the symbols of Holocaust, the mass annihilation of Jews during WWII.
On that sad day, the public committee for honouring the memory of the victims of Babyn Yar, including a few dozens of public organizations and political parties, organized a memorial service and a procession on September 29. The service was led by the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate, Patriarch Filaret. Auxiliary Bishop Josyf Milian of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church participated in the service.
A few hundred people gathered near the monument to the Victims of Babyn Yar. The speakers stressed that this place of tragedy cannot be divided according to the nationalities for peoples of various nationalities and denominations were killed here, including Jews, Gypsies, Caraites, Ukrainians, Russians, Soviet prisoners of war. The speakers also reminded that the victims of the totalitarian Communist regime were buried here long before 1941. The victims of Holodomor of 1932-33 and Stalin’s terror of 1930s were transported to this place.
In the end of the service, Patriarch Filaret said in his address that it is the Christians’ duty to pray for the dead, especially for those who perished under such tragic circumstances.
After the service, a memorial procession was led by the patriarch to the monuments in Babyn Yar, such as the Stone of Memory of Killed Gypsies, Memorial of Victims of the Nazis and the Memorial Cross of remembrance of Ukrainian patriots. The participants sang “Eternal Memory” near the mentioned cross and Patriarch Filaret reminded that many years ago, a chapel was to be built here. “Shame will be on us, Ukrainians if we do not build a chapel here in the nearest future where each Christian can pray for the victims of Babyn Yar,” said the hierarch, reported the press service of the Kyivan Patriarchate.
