On October 22, 1941, a few days after the occupation of the city by Romanian and German troops, a bomb exploded at the headquarters of the Romanian army in Odessa. 29. and September 30, 2021 marked the 80th anniversary of the largest mass shooting on the territory of the conquered Soviet Union with almost 34,000 Jewish children, women and men from Kiev in the gorge of Babyn Yar. On this occasion, the Federal President and Elke Büdenbender took part in the official commemoration ceremony on 6 October in Kiev.
On the morning of the day, they first visited the northern Ukrainian city of Koryukivka to commemorate the non-Jewish civilian victims of the German occupation between 1941 and 1944. Along with Belarus and Poland, Ukraine has suffered most from the German war of extermination and exploitation in the East. At the beginning of March 1943, an SS Sonderkommando in Koryukivka murdered about 6,700 locals as part of a so-called retaliatory action for the activities of Soviet partisans. The Federal President laid a wreath both at the monument in the centre of Koryukivka and at a reburial site in a nearby forest. He spoke with survivors of the massacre and students about the historical events and aspects of memory.
In the evening, the Federal President and his Israeli counterpart Yitzhak Herzog attended a memorial ceremony on the grounds of Babyn Yar at the invitation of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. Steinmeier emphasised in his speech“Far more than a million Jews fell victim to this Holocaust by bullets here in Ukraine. Here in Kiev, in Odessa, in Berdychiv, Lypovets, Chernivtsi, Mizocz, in so many other places. Who in my country, in Germany, knows them today, these blood-soaked names? All these places, these crimes have no adequate place in our memory. Ukraine is far too pale, far too vaguely listed on our map of memory.” At the same time, he expressed his gratitude for the reconciliation of close partnership between the two countries. After the event, the Federal President and Elke Büdenbender flew back to Berlin in the late evening.
