I want to wish all of you a very happy new year, but since it falls this year on September 29, I would be remiss if I didn’t remember this tragic date for my family and worldwide Jewish community. On this day in 1941, in the city of my birth, over 30,000 Jews obediently walked to their slaughter, to be executed and thrown in a mass grave in Babi Yar.
An article printed in a paper and reposted on many posts and trees around the city by the giddy locals said that all Jews of Kiev must gather their belonging and show up at the specified location or they will be arrested. And so they came. Their belongings were taken away and they were made to stand at the edge of a giant hole and murdered. Some were still alive as bodies continued to rain on them from the top.
On Rosh Hashanah we will pray a lot for peace. Most of the Babi Yar story is peaceful. Jews received a peaceful order, they peacefully gathered their belonging, and peacefully assembled. They peacefully registered, peacefully handed over their belongings, and peacefully got in line. The murders of over 30,000 people took two days to complete, but people peacefully stood close to the sounds of gun fire and screams, peacefully waiting their turn. All of it was peaceful until the moment you stepped in front of the ravine, then it wasn’t peaceful, but only briefly. That’s why one prayer specifies, “Lord, teach us peace, but teach us that peace means more than quiet”. And until we learn that, we will continue to only have peace while we stand in line for slaughter.
Originally written and posted by my friend, Alex Dovgalevsky, Director of Guns ‘N’ Moses San Diego
