Bykivnia
Not a word or place well-known to the average American, but certainly of significance in this part of the world, and not only Ukraine. The Great Terror (1937-1938) represents only the height of the period, spanning, more than a decade from the late 1920s until 1953, of the most repressive practices of Stalin's rule of the Soviet Union. Bykivnia, the mass grave in which victims from the city of Kyiv, the Soviet Union's third largest, were buried, cannot tell the stories of those who are buried there, but the site does convey a sense of the tragedy of the period.
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| This is the entrance to the site, along a main highway leaving the city on the Left (Western) Bank of the Dnipro. |
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| There are plans to build a larger, permanent memorial with a museum, church, and other structures. But for now, it's a few modest but powerful memorials. |
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| Most of the trees don't have any names, only these cloth markers with a traditional Ukrainian pattern. |
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| A few also have these red and white ones, left in honor of the numerous Polish victims. |
Needless to say, it's a very fraught subject. I don't think I can possibly explain it all, but I hope these pictures convey a sense of how people here are constructing a historical memory about the period.
Needless to say, it's a very fraught subject. I don't think I can possibly explain it all, but I hope these pictures convey a sense of how people here are constructing a historical memory about the period.
2 comments:
Do you remember what the cross in the second to last picture is? The flowers in front of it seem to be from the Polish government but I can't read the entire text on the ribbon.
I can't remember if it was that one specifically, but there was one that said (at least as far as I could guess given my limited knowledge of Polish) it was from the Minister of Defense.
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