Reflection on my travels in Kyiv fifty-two years ago

Events of the last few weeks have made me recall my own travels in Kyiv, then spelled Kiev, and what I saw there in 1970 as a 15 year old girl. What comes to mind most clearly is our visit to Babi Yar and the official denial that it was even there at all.

I was traveling through the Soviet Union with my parents, in our own car, heading to visit the tiny Carpathian town where my father had been born. We started in Finland and spent a month driving through what was then the U.S.S.R.

In Kyiv, as in every other place, we were provided an official Communist Party member guide who took us to all the prescribed sites. My dad understood that the memorial of Babi Yar was nearby and asked our guide, Victor. “It is not here” Victor told us, “you must be mistaken.” We asked many people, but they all claimed they had never heard anything about such a place.

One evening we were taken to a show of Ukrainian singing and dancing, where we met a tour group of Canadian Ukrainians. When my dad mentioned our search for Babi Yar, they suggested their guide might be able to help.

The next morning we followed the directions the Canadians’ guide had so carefully given us. I remember there were big blocks of Soviet-style apartment buildings, yet this area, maybe an acre, was an overgrown, empty ravine. An old woman stood in a clearing saying Kaddish, but when she saw us she ran quickly away.

It is estimated 34,000 Jews were killed and buried at Babi Yar within two days. The Nazis made them stand around a huge hole, then opened fire, filled the pit with bodies and brought in the next group. I would tell you more about it, but nobody could do it as well as the poet Yevtushenko. If you have not read his poem Babi Yar, do so.

Today Putin tells his people lies and calls the Jewish Zelinsky a Nazi. Demagogues continue to arouse the hatred of their followers and profit by the chaos they create.

But just as the Soviets could not make the horrors of Babi Yar disappear, Putin can never bring back the glory days of the U.S.S.R. and Trump can never make America great again by building on fear, division and the denial of truth.

Lies are lies. Atrocities are committed by people who accept those lies and are manipulated into acting on them.

I am chilled by the similarities I see in the efforts of a government to bury the truth, to claim alternate histories and use these false realities toward selfish ends. When the past president of my own country states that Putin is brilliant, perpetuates a completely unproven lie about the last election and denies the evil of the Jan. 6 insurrection that took the lives of five people and rocked our democracy, I am compelled to cry out to my fellow citizens.

It is up to each of us to honor the courage of the Ukrainian people by embracing and fighting for truth each day. When we speak the truth we fight against the lies some use to divide us. By cherishing and partaking of our right, as Americans, to do so, we deny the liars power. I believe this is our privilege as Americans, and our responsibility as human beings in the 21st century.

Berk lives in Shelter Bay.