Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday condemned the attack on a major Holocaust memorial site carried out by Russian forces, but neglected to blame Russia directly.
Lapid called for the sanctity of the memorial site to be preserved.
Russian attack on TV tower in Kyiv, close to Babi Yar Holocaust memorial
(Twitter)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky responded in a message via Twitter. "To the world: what is the point of saying 'never again' for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babi Yar?" he said in apparent dig at Israel.
"At least 5 killed. History repeating…"
The Babi Yar memorial is located on a mass grave of 34,000 Jews, murdered in 1941 when the city underwent Nazi occupation.
"Russia has launched a missile attack on the territory where the Babi Yar memorial complex is located. Once again, these barbarians are murdering the victims of the Holocaust!" Andriy Yermak, Chairman of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, said.
Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and former head of the Jewish Agency, said in a statement: “Putin seeking to distort and manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country is utterly abhorrent. It is symbolic that he starts attacking Kyiv by bombing the site of the Babi Yar, the biggest of Nazi massacres,” referring to remarks by Putin that the invasion of Ukraine was, in part, to "de-Nazify" the country.
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Ukrainian first responders near the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial after it was damaged in a Russian strike
(Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine)
“We, at the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, built on Europe’s largest mass grave of the Holocaust, work to preserve historical memory following decades of Soviet suppression of historical truth, so that the evils of the past can never be repeated. We must not allow the truth to - once again - become the victim of war,” he continued.
First published: 20:39, 03.01.22