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‘Don’t you see?': Zelenskyy to Jews after Russians bomb Holocaust massacre site
Babi Yar is the site of one of the largest mass killings by the Nazi Germany during the second world war. More than 30,000 Jews over the course of two days in September 1941 were shot dead by the German troops and their Ukrainian auxiliaries.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday urged the global Jewish community not to stay silent and speak out against the Russian invasion of his country after airstrikes hit the Holocaust massacre site Babi Yar in Kyiv the day before.
In a video message, the president said, "Don't you see what is happening?…Nazism is born in silence. So, shout about killings of civilians."
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On Tuesday, Russia switched to missile strikes as it showered them in Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv and capital Kyiv, causing several casualties. The strikes began in the morning, and later in the day, Russians bombed the primary television tower at the Babi Yar district in Kyiv due to which as many as five people were killed and five more wounded.
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Babi Yar is the site of one of the largest mass killings by the Nazi Germany during the second world war. More than 30,000 Jews over the course of two days in September 1941 were shot dead by the German troops and their Ukrainian auxiliaries. It was one of many gruesome war crimes committed by the Germans - besides the setting up of concentration camps across regions in Europe under their control then, in order to wipe out Jews from the continent.
Zelenskyy said in the video message that the bombing in Babi Yar shows for several people in Russia “Kyiv is absolutely foreign”. “They don't know a thing about Kyiv, about our history. But they all have orders to erase our history, erase our country, erase us all,” he added.
The Ukrainian president said despite the world promising “never happen again”, they all died “again by Babyn Yar”.
Never again is a slogan that the global community adopted after the end of World War II in the spirit of never allowing the Holocaust crimes to be repeated.
On Tuesday, after the TV tower in Babi Yar was knocked off, Zelenskyy took to Twitter to question the intention behind the “never again” phrase. “What's the point?” he asked, saying that history is repeating itself.
The Ukrainian president, who is a comedian-turned politician, has been regularly addressing his country and the world in video messages - a move that has been pivotal in rallying his people to stand up strong in the face of Russian troops. He claimed the Ukrainian army has so far killed 6,000 Russian soldiers as the conflict entered its seventh day on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, air raid sirens engulfed Kyiv at the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday as Russian soldiers continued their bombardment in Ukraine's capital. According to an Interfax report, Russian foreign ministry said it has taken control of Kherson, a port city in Ukraine. Four more casualties and nine injuries were reported in shelling during the day with Kharkiv's mayor Igor Terekhov saying that Russian forces were bombing residential blocks.
Russia said that its delegation is “ready” to hold the second round of ceasefire talks with Ukraine later in the day, but Zelenskyy has asked bombings in his country to be stopped first before any negotiation resumes. Notably, the first round of talks yielded very little progress.
