Returning Voices: Jewish Memories Come Back to Ukraine

People in Ukraine have long been deprived of modern instruments to publicize and transmit their memories of horror, whether through archives, museums, libraries, photography, new books, or films. In high and popular culture, any mention of Ukrainian, Jewish, Crimean Tatar or Polish suffering was strictly regulated. Pre-modern memory practices were shattered along with the traditional milieux as families were killed or displaced and entire neighborhoods destroyed. Many memory-bearers decided to never return to sites of horror even if they were not deprived of the right to return. As for those who lived entire lives at the site of others` terror, many were determined not to feel it or literally and symbolically wished its disappearance. The difficult past never inhabited their living space. Like Babyn Yar and many other killing sites across Ukraine, vast spaces are absent from society`s focus. Sites of atrocity are simply perceived as places of past horror and not part of a continuing narrative. Thus Ukrainian society is still wrestling with this dark memory today.

I will unravel the layers and dimensions of this repressed cultural memory, lost and found, focusing on poetry books about the Holocaust and its aftermath on Ukrainian soil. These books, written in or translated into Ukrainian within the last decade, enable a dramatic comeback of memory. They intersect with a wave of autobiographical and documentary writings and appear as voices that transcend cultures, continents, and generations. The books discussed will be Marianna Kiyanovska`s The Voices of Babyn Yar, winner of the 2019 Shevchenko National Prize (published 2017 in Ukrainian; 2022 in English); Boris Khersonsky`s We`ll Turn into the Warmth and Ashes (published 2020 in Russian); To Bow to the Tree (published 2019 in Ukrainian); and There Was No Stalin (published 2018 in Ukrainian). The latter two were shortlisted for the same prestigious Shevchenko award in 2021.