Mr. Speaker, today marks the 75th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre. On this date, in 1941, in Kyiv, 34,000 Jewish men, women, children, and infants, were rounded up, stripped of their possessions, shot, and dumped into the Babyn Yar ravine by the Nazis. So began the “Holocaust by bullets” in Eastern Europe.
This week, a series of memorial events are being held on this horrific anniversary. The Babyn Yar memorial project was spearheaded by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, a groundbreaking group founded and funded by Ukrainian-Canadian businessman and visionary James Temerty.
Thousands of forgotten “Holocaust by bullets” sites are deserving of remembrance. One such site is at the ancient Jewish cemetery of Sambir where, on the first day of Passover in 1943, 2,000 Jews were massacred. After seven years of patient and meticulous work, my friend Mark Freiman and I signed a memorandum of understanding with the mayor of Sambir, Yurij Hamar, this September 8 to memorialize this site.
May their souls be bound in the bond of eternal life.