December 13 in Kharkov Leonid Kuchma walked along the road Nazis had driven the city inhabitants to the execution. President of Ukraine opened the memorial "Drobitsky Yar". Among those present were Israel's Ambassador Anna Azari, governor of the Kharkov region Yevgeny Kushnarev, people's deputies, sponsors of the construction, representatives of the regional Jewish community, pupils of Jewish schools, clergy of different confessions, city inhabitants.
"The monument commemorates victims of the fascist totalitarianism which brought so much grief together with the communist totalitarianism", - underlined the head of state speaking before the gathering.
The Memorial begins with a monument stylized under a Jewish menorah. A road leads from a black Menorah to a white main building of the complex. Thousands of Kharkov Jews took their last path along it in 1941-1942.
These dates (1941-1942) are found on the wall of the main arched building. Its underground part houses a Hall of memory, which wall bears (to be added) the established names of the victims. Here is also found a stylized under marble plate with the commandment "Kill not!"
The territory includes two burials, two trenches: one is 100 metres long and the other - 60. The Kharkov archives contained data of 15 thousand victims. They consider in the "Drobitsky Yar" foundation the number of the dead is 30 thousand. Nazis killed not only Jews here but also Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians. Though, Jews constituted the overwhelming majority.
In its time 180 tons of a famous Zhytomir granite (Lenin's Mausoleum is made of it) were delivered for the construction. Due to this granite's particular qualities (it has reddish veins), the stones lying at Menorah's foot seem to bleed.
After the materials of "Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine" |