In late 2019, after more than six months of negotiations, I accepted the offer made by the Supervisory Board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center to take up the position of the project’s artistic director. I realized, totally and unequivocally, the significance of this step as well as my personal and civil responsibility in connection to it.
What happened at Babyn Yar was a terrible tragedy for Jews, Ukrainians and the entire world. My family was affected by this tragedy too. I am the son of a Jewish woman who miraculously fled Ukraine on the eve of the mass murder. The feelings of those who experienced the Holocaust, and of the descendants of those who perished and those who survived, are infinitely important to me. I myself identify with these people, and I feel a responsibility to the fragility of human feelings. The memory of the fallen, of the murdered, is a very intimate and significant part of the people’s collective memory and it needs to be treated appropriately.
The methods that I used when working on the DAU film project are fundamentally different from and are not appropriate for dealing with the memory of this tragedy. The experimental, arthouse DAU project portrays the degradation of the Soviet system that trapped a Soviet individual. The responsibility for the Babyn Yar tragedy lies fully with the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany, and there can be no disagreement here. Furthermore, the Memorial Center project cannot be authored by a single person, it can only be created collectively, openly and in consultation with the public.
A fundamental aspect of the work of an institution that deals with collective memory is scientific research. In this respect, a tremendous amount of work has been done that has materialized into a historical narrative, which is represented by the Center’s official stance on the key issues of memory and history. It has been written and reviewed by leading Ukrainian and international researchers.
My work concerns the artistic presentation of this historical narrative only; what I am in a position to do is to find the visual language to convey the hundreds of thousands of stories and facts that have been meticulously collected and described by the project team. The accuracy, neutrality and reliability of historical facts and of their presentation are essential to the Memorial’s architectural and display concepts.
Unfortunately, excerpts from a working presentation, which was actually a draft prepared in the autumn of 2019, have been anonymously leaked to the media and are now being manipulatively used to criticize both myself and the project in general. I would like to reiterate that this presentation was nothing more than working notes prepared before I took the position of artistic director. This interpretation has no connection whatsoever to the artistic spirit that I am striving to embody in the project.
I share the outcry in response to the materials in the US, Ukrainian and Israeli media that followed the Internet publication of these excerpts. I do not and have never intended to create anything that would resemble an amusement park or Disneyland at the site of the tragedy, I would consider this sacrilege. Such manipulation casts doubt on and even jeopardizes a highly commendable initiative – to finally erect a memorial at Babyn Yar and honor the memory of the fallen.
Criticism of me and of the project in general has become a political issue. In the same way as with scientific research, I cannot and will not engage in the political aspects of the work of the Foundation. It is only the Supervisory Board, which embraces many highly respected figures with vast experience of working in public service that is in a position to conceive and approve the organization’s public policies. It is this same Board that will approve the key ideas suggested for the artistic presentation of the project.
I recognize and accept the fact that the field of my work is delineated by red lines that are based on the feelings of those who went through this tragedy and the many who have since suffered from its legacy. We have a common goal – to create a modern museum that for decades to come will be able to make the memory of the fallen at Babyn Yar a vital and distinct part of our life and to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.
The writer is a director and producer. In 2005, his debut feature film “4” earned him multiple awards including a Golden Cactus and Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.