International scientific and practical conference “Holocaust in Ukraine (Babyn Yar Tragedy Memorial Day)”
The Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in cooperation with V.I. Vernadsky Taurida National University organized international scientific and practical conference “Holocaust in Ukraine (Babyn Yar Tragedy Memorial Day)” which was held on September 29, 2022 in Kyiv. It was dedicated to the 81st anniversary of mass execution of Ukrainian Jews by the Nazi occupants in Babyn Yar during the World War II. Scholars, higher education institutions teachers, postgraduates and students took part in the conference.
The conference report can be found here.
Leading research associate of Ethnic and Political Studies department of our Institute, PhD in history, director of NGO Ukrainian Centre for Holocaust Studies Anatoly Podolskyi presented his report “Holocaust history in Ukraine: challenges and research perspectives” where he introduced the conference participants to the state and specifics of Holocaust research at the current stage, focused on existing gaps that require in-depth and systematic study.
The speaker drew special attention to the problems surrounding the construction of a modern memorial complex in Babyn Yar, emphasizing that the memory of the past, in particular the victims of the World War II, the victims of the Holocaust in Ukraine today is also a battlefield with the russian aggressor, a battle for one's own Ukrainian identity and subjectivity in the realm of culture and politics of memory.
Leading research associate of the Department of Theory and History of Political Science, Doctor of Political Sciences, Vyacheslav Yaremchuk, in his speech “The tragedy of Babyn Yar and modernity: consolidation of Ukrainian society, its spiritual and cultural unity in the conditions of the full-scale invasion by the russian federation,” noted that the tragedy of mass murder in Babyn Yar in 1941–1943, against the backdrop of the modern russian-Ukrainian war, the aggressor country's genocide, ethnocide, and linguicide against the Ukrainian people, acquired a new symbolic meaning.
The speaker expressed his conviction that the Ukrainian state has all the capabilities to overcome the current dangerous challenge. The key to victory, and thus to the preservation of life, freedom, and democracy, can only be joint actions of the entire society, awareness of the sense of unity, unification around a common core, which is the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian identity.
During the conference, researchers of the institute (V. Yaremchuk, A. Podolskyi, M. Horbatyuk) familiarized the participants with the latest scientific publications of the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies. The books were transferred to the university library.
The scientific event took place within the framework of the “Autumn scientific marathon in Tavriysk: searches and perspectives in modern conditions” of V.I. Vernadsky Taurida National University and scientific-research topic of the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine “Concept of the universality of Ukraine: origins, evolution, political relevance”.
