Monument to Gypsies massacred at infamous site lies rusting in Kyiv garage thanks to bureaucratic tangles
For most of the world, the words Babyn Yar are synonymous with the slaughter of Jews. During just two days in September 1941, thousands of Jews were gunned down at the ravine in the outskirts of Kyiv. But Gypsy officials say a month before the first Jews were shot, the site was already being used to massacre their people.
“The first to be killed at Babyn Yar were four Gypsy tribes from the Kurynyovka district in Kyiv,” explained Volodymyr Zolotarenko, head of a Kyiv-based Gypsy organization.
Gypsies, the only group besides Jews slated for extermination under the Nazis on account of race, accounted for a large number of the approximately 100,000 killed at Babyn Yar. In Europe, there are few monuments to mark their suffering. Anatoly Ignashchenko, architect of the original Babyn Yar memorial, decided to change this. Four years ago, Ignashchenko began work on a Gypsy monument. Due to bureaucratic tangles, stubborn individuals and injured pride, Ignashchenko’s Gypsy monument lies rusting in a Kyiv garage.
Babyn Yar, one of the world’s largest known mass graves, is much larger than the 350 meters encompassed by the present park and memorial. A Soviet government bent on erasing the misery of Babyn Yar built apartments, shops and factories on the 750 kilometers used by the Nazis for systematic murder.
It was not until the 1960s, when a number of prominent artists protested the lack of historical acknowledgement, that plans for construction of a monument were set in motion.
A design competition was held and Ignashchenko won. His towering monument of tangled bodies falling into the ravine was finished in 1974.
But the artist no longer believes he is finished. Four years ago, Ignashchenko, a third-generation Gypsy himself, took up the cause of building a monument to the Gypsy victims of Babyn Yar.
Gypsy populations have never been well documented, making it impossible to determine how many perished during World War II. Conservative estimates are that 200,000 died.
Despite the mass killings, Hryhorychenko contends that there is only one monument dedicated to Gypsies in all of Europe. The absence of Gypsy monuments is part of what inspired Ignashchenko to create his sculpture: a Gypsy caravan of carved granite that weighed more than 50 tons.
Ignashchenko claimed he received permission from the mayor, Kyiv’s chief architect and even President Leonid Kuchma to erect the monument near the site of his original sculpture; but when he placed it there, he claimed, the monument was destroyed and he was arrested.
Irina Yarmoluk, press secretary for Kyiv architect Sergei Babushkin, said that while Babushkin had heard about the project, he was never shown plans so had nothing to approve.
Ignashchenko felt that as the artist who created the original monument, he did not require permission to add to his creation.
Undeterred by the destruction of his granite caravan, Ignashchenko returned to work on a new memorial. With money from the Swiss Holocaust Fund, the 70-year-old artist began work on a new caravan, this time made of sheets of steel.
When he was done, he again placed it near his original memorial in Babyn Yar. When ordered to remove it, Ignashchenko took it to the garage, where it has rested since.
Ignashchenko believes all monuments belong near the main monument. He laments the out-of-the-way location of a menorah and cross that lie hidden behind buildings across the street from the lawns of Babyn Yar. Ignashchenko feels that his Gypsy caravan, the finishing touch for his monument, should be placed in the center of the park.
In addition to the Gypsy monument, a monument to children, a monument to Orthodox victims and a weeping wall are to be constructed. Yevgeni Portyanko deputy head of the Kyiv city’s department for remodeling of historical monuments, thinks additional monuments should be placed outside the center of the Babyn Yar park. Instead, monuments will be dispersed among the buildings constructed on Babyn Yar’s killing grounds.
“We think the meaning of the original memorial will be lost if we build other memorials around it,” explained Lubov Mazur, a specialist within Portyanko’s department.
Officials have decided the caravan will go on a street corner now occupied by three kiosks. It is in the vicinity of that corner, rather than in the main park, where Portyanko thinks the Gypsies were shot.
Ignashchenko will have none of that. He says the site is too far from the main monument and fears no one will visit it. Besides, he says, he has all the permission he needs to park his caravan near his original monument.
Mazur agrees that Ignashchenko was granted permission to place his monument on the territory of Babyn Yar; but he says a division of the city architect’s office, the Kyiv Project, has the authority to determine exactly where new memorials will be placed.
It remains unclear whether the monument will be erected in time for observance of Babyn Yar’s 60th anniversary in September. If Ignashchenko refuses to soften his stance, it seems unlikely.
“I don’t want to deal with the Kyiv authorities anymore,” said Ignashchenko. “I’d rather place my monument in Spain or in the Carpathian Mountains. But now the Gypsies won’t let me. They want it here.”
