“Never again is also about responsibility”: Refat Chubarov reminded that in Babyn Yar, the Nazis killed not only Jews

The head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Refat Chubarov, on the 85th anniversary of the mass shootings at Babi Yar, reminded not only of the 33,771 Jews killed here in two days in September 1941, but also of other victims of the Nazis — Roma, prisoners of war, Ukrainian underground fighters, and nationalists. He dedicated a separate part of his column to Israel, the World Holocaust Forum 2020 in Yad Vashem, and the question of where historical memory ends and its political use begins.

Author: Stas Shifer

On September 29, 2026, the head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Refat Chubarov, published a column in the publication “GORDON”, dedicated to the anniversary of the mass killings at Babi Yar.

Chubarov begins precisely with the Jewish tragedy. On September 29–30, 1941, SS units, German police, and their assistants shot 33,771 Jews here. This figure is contained in the Einsatzgruppen reports and is confirmed by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. It was one of the largest mass murders of Jews in one place during the Holocaust.

But the killings at Babi Yar did not end there. In the following two years, the Nazis continued to use this place for executions. Among the victims were Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Ukrainian civilians, underground fighters, and other groups. According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the total number of those killed at Babi Yar could reach approximately 100,000 people.

It is this part of history that Chubarov draws attention to.

Among the dead were representatives of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, in particular, the poet and activist of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Olena Teliha. For the Israeli reader, it is important not to mix two different scales of tragedy here: the mass murder of Jews on September 29–30, 1941, was a specially organized Holocaust action, after which Babi Yar continued to function as a place of murder for other groups of people. The very fact of subsequent executions does not change the central place of the Jewish tragedy in the history of Babi Yar.

NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency reminds: today, on the territory of Babi Yar, there are monuments to different groups of the dead, but it was the mass shooting of almost 34,000 Kyiv Jews in two days that made this place one of the main symbols of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.

Chubarov, however, goes beyond historical chronicles. The central concept of his text becomes Never again.

“Never again should concern not only the crimes of the past,” he writes in the column. [Translation from Ukrainian.]

According to Chubarov, the memory of the Holocaust loses part of its meaning if it remains only a formula pronounced during memorial ceremonies. He associates it with the modern opposition to mass killings, ethnic persecution, aggression, and occupation. This is the political position of the author of the column, which he transfers to the current war of Russia against Ukraine and the situation in occupied Crimea.

Why Chubarov remembered Yad Vashem

For Israel, the most sensitive part of the column begins with the events of January 23, 2020, when the Fifth World Holocaust Forum was held at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, timed to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

One of the speakers at the forum was Vladimir Putin. Polish President Andrzej Duda did not attend the event amid a dispute over the opportunity to speak. The forum organizers later noted themselves that the absence of the Polish president became a noticeable part of the conflict around various interpretations of World War II history.

Chubarov recalls this episode because by January 2020, Russia had already controlled annexed Crimea for almost six years, and relations between Moscow and Kyiv were in a state of armed conflict.

But there is another important detail here, and it is confirmed not only by Chubarov’s words.

After the forum, Yad Vashem indeed acknowledged errors in the historical video materials shown. The memorial center reported that the videos contained inaccuracies and provided a partial and unbalanced representation of historical events. In particular, they did not show the division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, and there were errors with the borders of Poland and neighboring states on the maps.

Yad Vashem apologized for these errors and emphasized its commitment to historical accuracy.

For the Israeli audience, this is a significant moment. It is not about an external accusation against Yad Vashem: the Israeli memorial center itself publicly acknowledged the problem and corrected its position after criticism.

It is from this episode that Chubarov draws his own political conclusion.

“Memory should not become a tool of political legitimation,” he writes. [Translation from Ukrainian.]

Babi Yar as a dispute not only about the past

In 2026, Babi Yar remains a place where several layers of memory intersect simultaneously. First of all, the memory of the almost completely destroyed Jewish community of occupied Kyiv. Then, the memory of tens of thousands of other people whom the Nazis killed here until 1943.

There is also another layer — the dispute over how the memory of World War II is used by modern states and politicians.

Chubarov examines this problem through the experience of the Crimean Tatar people, the Russian occupation of Crimea, and the war against Ukraine. His conclusion is precisely the author’s position, not a historical reference. But the example he gives with the 2020 forum is important also because the dispute then took place not somewhere else, but in Jerusalem, at the main Israeli Holocaust memorial center.

Therefore, the last phrase of his column sounds not so much about 1941, but about today:

“Never again is not only about memory. It is also about responsibility.” [Translation from Ukrainian.]

Eighty-five years after the shooting of 33,771 Kyiv Jews, Babi Yar remains not only a place of mourning. It is also a place of a difficult conversation about what exactly humanity means when it says the words “Never again”.