We don't forget

Russian missiles and bullets during the assault on Kyiv hit the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center site where tens of thousands of Jews were massacred at the time of the Holocaust. G&G _ Magazine has decided to show the grandeur and beauty of the center that was there before.

The Crystal Crying Wall of Crying is the work of world-renowned conceptual artist Marina Abramovic. The Crystal Wall of Crying is a symbolic continuation of the Wailing Wall of the Jerusalem Temple. It is constructed of anthracite and rock-crystals, and it is a monument to the Babyn Yar tragedy and the Holocaust. The wall creates a special space where everyone can think, remember, reflect on the tragic events of the past and draw personal conclusions.

The Symbolic Synagogue. Place for Reflection - Located at Babyn Yar, the pop-up synagogue comprises a pair of 11-metrehigh walls that unfold using a manual winch to reveal its decorative and detailed interiors. As the building opens out, a roof pops up to shelter a wooden balcony and seating area inside that drop down from within its walls. Babyn Yar Synagogue was designed by Manuel Herz Architects to mark the 80th anniversary of a massacre that took place at the site during the Holocaust. One of the walls is set on a track so that it can be moved using a manual winch. When folded the two walls are positioned together, but when unfolded a threedimensional synagogue is created with a roof that pops up and a balcony and seating that folds down. The synagogue stands on a wooden platform and has walls decorated with prayers and blessings. The wood is sourced from old oak wood, coming from all parts of Ukraine. This ensures that the building has a unifying quality, down to the very material used in its construction. The wood is more than a hundred years old. It will therefore connect the time of before the massacre, to the contemporary era.

Mirror Field Installation - The center of the ‘Mirror Field’ audio-visual installation is the symbol of the Tree of Life, which is found in most religions and mythologies of the world. The Babyn Yar tragedy shows how easily this tree can be destroyed, and its branches broken. The structure is made of stainless steel, the podium is in the form of a mirror disk with a diameter of about 40 meters, with 10 columns of 6 meters high installed on it. The columns and the disk were shot through by bullets of the same caliber that the Nazis used during execution in Babyn Yar. The installation is available around the clock. During the day, the sky is reflected in it. At night, the light and the sound of memory pass through the bullet holes, and rays fall from the tops of the columns into the sky. The main background is overlaid with archival recordings of pre-war Kyiv, unique Yiddish songs of the 1920s and 1930s from the collections of the National Library named after V. Vernadsky restored by the Institute for Information Recording of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Choral and Memorial Christian music, Ukrainian and Roma Memorial songs, works by contemporary Ukrainian composers are performed.

"A Glance Into the Past" is a series of installations in Kyiv. Looking through the peephole of the monocular, the viewer sees photos taken during the Nazi occupation of the city in 1941-1943. The project focuses on the tragedy of Babyn Yar, and the events associated with it. In early October 1941, immediately after the executions, the propagandist photographer Johannes Hähle took the most famous photos of Babyn Yar. They were the most important evidence of the crimes committed by the Nazis. He also took a series of photos in Kyiv, Lubny and Kharkiv. The Hamburg Institute for Social Research first showed footage of his film at an exhibition in the 1990s.

The Tree. A Glance Into the Past - The installation consists of two stone boulders of natural processing, with a tree between the stones. Monoculars with photographs taken in late September/early October 1941 in occupied Kyiv by the German military photographer and propagandist Johannes Hähle are embedded in the stone steles. Two male bodies are photographed in Peremohy Avenue as the crowd walks past them. Researchers at the Memorial Center have pinpointed the locations where these pictures were taken. It was where the photographer was standing at the time the photos were taken that the stone boulders with the photos were placed.

The tree that is included in the installation has been heat-treated, making the wood fireproof and vandal-resistant. Previously, Ukraine had not used heat-treatment technology in furnaces for trees of such a big size. The boulders were transported from the Lezniki quarry and were not amenable to any further processing after extraction. This symbolizes the intention not to interpret the events of the past, but to allow the viewer to see them as they were.

Kurenivska Tragedy. A Glance Into the Past - The glass-and-brick monument commemorates the Kurenivka Tragedy, a mudslide caused by a dam burst on March 13, 1961, that killed at least 145 people. The installation sits on the very spot of the dam's rupture and is made from a variety of locally produced bricks, some dating back to 1843. The glass tank at top is filled with 600 liters of slurry: the equivalent waste that would have come from the production of the bricks beneath it. Other elements of the installation include the archival films of the tragedy, seen through monocles embedded in the bricks. Brick, glass, slurry, and videos combine to make what looks and acts like a periscope peering into the past.