During World War II, Ukraine became one of the major theatres of war.

Already on 1 September 1939, part of the territory of Ukraine was occupied by the Soviet Union, following the agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany — the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — on the division of Eastern Europe.

In 1941, when the Nazi government decided to break their partnership and invade the Soviet Union, the territory of Ukraine was rapidly occupied. Around 30 million Ukrainians experienced Nazi occupation. Ukraine’s total demographic losses as a result of the 1939–1945 war amounted to 10.4 million people, including 5.2 million civilians.

Following the Russian full-scale invasion in February 2022, everyone and everything in Ukraine has come under Russian attack, including the memory of the Holocaust.

In Bakhmut, during 1941–1943, over 3,000 Jews were exterminated. Since 2022, thousands of civilians have been killed or injured by Russia in Bakhmut.

At Drobytsky Yar in Kharkiv, where the Jewish community once comprised around 15% of the population, the Nazis executed between 16,000 and 19,000 Jews. In 2002, a 20-metre monument bearing the identified names of the victims was established. On 26 March 2022, Russian artillery shelling damaged the memorial.

Babyn Yar, or Babi Yar, in Kyiv is a place of memory for both Ukrainian and Jewish communities, where over 100,000 Kyiv residents were executed during the Nazi occupation. Around 33,000 Jews were murdered there in just two days, on 29–30 September 1941. On 1 March 2022, a Russian missile strike hit the area near Babyn Yar, disturbing not only the memory of the dead but also taking the lives of at least five more people.

Russian missiles target not only places of memory, but also those who still remember.

On 18 March 2022, Russian artillery struck a multi-storey residential building in Kharkiv. On the ninth floor, 96-year-old Borys Romanchenko, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald, lost his life.

Roman Shvartsman, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor from Odesa testified: “Hitler wanted to kill me because I am Jewish; now Putin is trying to kill me because I am Ukrainian.”

Join us for a conversation on the memorialisation of the Holocaust in Kharkiv and the impact of the Russian invasion.

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