Wiesenthal Center Denounces Decision by Kiev City Council to Build Hotel at Babi Yar Site of Holocaust Mass Murder

September 24, 2009

WIESENTHAL CENTER DENOUNCES DECISION BY KIEV CITY COUNCIL TO BUILD HOTEL AT BABI YAR SITE OF HOLOCAUST MASS MURDER

Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center today denounced the recent decision by the Kiev city council to build a hotel at Babi Yar, the site of one of the largest massacres of Jews during the Holocaust. In a statement issued today in Jerusalem by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center noted that on September 29 and 30, 1941, 33,771 Jews were murdered at Babi Yar by the Nazis and their Ukrainian helpers and that many additional thousands were killed on the site in subsequent weeks. Over the course of the Nazi occupation of Kiev, it is estimated that approximately 100,000 people were slaughtered there, among them also Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

According to Zuroff:
“The plan to build a hotel on the site of the one of the worst Holocaust massacres is an example of utter insensitivity to the terrible crimes committed by the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators during World War II. Perhaps it is not surprising that such a decision was made in a country in which there was extensive participation of locals in the mass murder of the Jews, but since independence has not investigated a single case of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone brought any such murderers to justice. We urge the Ukrainian authorities to take all necessary measures to prevent the building of such an obviously inappropriate edifice at Babi Yar.”

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