Babi Yar is a ravine outside of Kiev where some 70,000 Jews were shot by the Nazis and buried in mass graves. This mass murder all occured within the space of a few days. Ilya Ehrenburg, like Evtushenko a Russian, wrote in his memoirs: "I saw the sands of Babii Yar. The Hitlerites killed 70,000 Jews there. I was shown a poster which said:'Yids of Kiev and surroundings, on Monday, Sept.29, you will report by 7 O'Clock with your belongings, papers and winter clothing to Drogoznitskaya St., near the Jewish cemetery. Failure to report will be punished by death.'"

Jews all around the world, but especially those of us who had relatives there, recoiled in shock at the picture of a prosession of doomed mothers with infants, the sick and disabled in trucks, virtually every Jew for miles around inching up Lvov St. to that place by the ravine where they were forced to undress and were shot. Their bodies were pretty much buried where they fell into the ravine: all 70,000 of them.

BABI YAR

No monument stand over Babii Yar.

A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.

I am afraid.

Today I am as old in years

as all the Jewish people.

I see myself now

a Jew.

Here I plod through ancient Egypt.

Here I perish, crucified, on the cross,

and to this day I bear the scars of nails.

I see myself as

Dreyfus.

The Philistine is both informer and judge.

I am behind bars.

I am surrounded.

Hounded, spat at, slandered.

Squealing,

dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace

stick their parasols into my face.

I see myself then

a young boy in Bialystok.

Blood runs, spilling over the floors.

The bar-room rabble rousers

give off a stench of Vodka and onion.

A boot kicks me aside, helpless.

In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.

While they jeer and shout,

"Beat the Yids. Save Russia!"

some grain-marketeer beats up my mother.

O my Russian people!

I know

you are

by nature international.

But those with unclean hands

have often taken in vain your purest name.

I know the goodness of my land.

How vile these anti-Semites- without a qualm

They proudly call themselves

"The Union of the Russian People!"

I see myself as

Anne Frank,

limpid as a branch in spring.

And I love.

And have no need of empty phrases.

My need

is that we look into each other.

How little we can see

or smell!

We are denied the leaves,

we are denied the sky!

Yet we can do so much-

tenderly

embrace in a dark room.

They're coming here?

Be not afraid.

It is the muffled sound

of spring itself-

spring is coming here.

Come then to me.

Quick, give your lips.

Are they breaking down the door?

No, it is the ice breaking...

The wild grass rustles over Babii Yar.

The trees look ominous

like judges.

Here all things scream in silence,

and, baring my head,

Slowly I feel myself

turning gray.

And I myself-

one massive, soundless scream

above the thousand thousand buried here-

I am

each old man

here shot down.

I am every child

here shot down.

Nothing within me

will ever forget.

Let the "Internationale"

thunder

when the last anti-Semite on earth

is buried forever.

In my blood there is no Jewish blood.

In their callous rage all anti-Semites

must hate me now

as if I were a Jew.

And for that reason

I am a true Russian!

 

translated by George Reavey