“Baby, come on.” Context’: In Ukraine’s Dark Memory

“The sense of the world” – a masterpiece

Babi Yar, evil memory. After the Nazi occupation, this place became a symbol of the extermination of Jews in Ukraine, which historians called the “Bullet Holocaust”. This is the face of the genocide of the Jews in the East. The Nazis methodically shoot, pile the bodies in pits, which are then covered with earth or lime. One and a half million Jews succumbed to this mass murder, which took place in approximately five hundred listed locations. On September 29 and 30, 1941, shot in small groups, 33,771 of them, men, women, old people and children, died in the Babi Yar ravine, northwest of Kiev.

L’einsatzgruppe C, a mobile destruction unit, operates there, assisted by the Waffen SS, as well as two battalions of zealous Ukrainian auxiliaries. In the summer of 1943, during the counterattack of the Red Army, the corpses were removed and burned. At the time of the liberation, if that term can be applied to a Ukraine that had returned to the Stalinist fold, the Soviet Union covered up the anti-Semitic nature of the massacres that would henceforth be carried out. “Peaceful Soviet Citizens”, then fill the gully. As for the specifically Ukrainian memory of the event, it is no less incomplete. None of the three memorial projects developed since 2000 has seen the light of day.

reflection on images

This sordid chapter, which among other things depicts the terminal stage of European anti-Semitism, is the burning heart of the new film by Ukrainian director Sergey Loznytsa. As its title suggests, Babi yar. context Taken at the same time in a more general framework, which leads to the situation in Ukraine during the Second World War. It is a montage film devoid of commentaries and interviews, which depicts the chrono-geography of events with short cartoons, finally working carefully on the soundtrack to weaken the effect of archival distance and make the film in our consciousness.

This method of intervention, its dramaturgical construction, the choice and sequence of images that make it up, make it, to say the least, a special work. Because it brings back the depth and complexity of Ukraine’s modern history, a valuable reminder given the tragic situation in that country. As he offers a fascinating reflection on the images, although he uses Nazi and Soviet propaganda archives, the director manages, precisely through the art of editing, to turn off their ideology in favor of a story that allows us to understand.