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January 7, 2000
Dear Friends,
In mid December, before the Christmas hustle and bustle, we worked in a Saturday tour of two local landmarks. The week had been cold and frosty but we're now convinced that life goes on despite the cold. Besides, my Russian tutor Svetlana and her husband Michael had generously offered to be our tour guides. (Svetlana also tried to use the occasion to force me to speak Russian but Marianne and I were only partially cooperative so we all ended up speaking an interesting Russian-English mixture.)
Just a mile or two from our house is the Babi Yar ravine where over 100,000 Jews and others were killed and buried during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv. Today, the ravine is largely filled with parkland and two monuments. The most recent is a Menorah erected by Israel a few years ago in memory of the Jews killed. Here is Marianne with Svetlana and Michael at the Menorah. We talked with them about the problems of Jews in the old Soviet Union and the new Ukraine since Michael ("Misha") is Jewish. They said they encounter little personal prejudice today but there certainly were doors that were closed to Misha, particularly as he tried to go beyond University in his Physics studies at the prestigious Moscow University. Concerning Babi Yar, recent history studies now indicate that while the main thrust behind the slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, and others was the Nazi occupying forces, the locals did little to protest.
The second Babi Yar monument is in the more stark, massive and dramatic style of Soviet public sculpture. The plaque at the foot of the monument note that over one hundred thousand people were killed and buried here. The most infamous killings were done by simply pushing thousands of people into the ravine to be buried alive by people falling on top. The monument presents a vision of people trying to resist and unsuccessfully trying to hold children above the flood of victims. Seeing this on a cold Winter afternoon was particularly chilling in every sense.
While we were at the monument, a small wedding party came to pay respects and have pictures taken. It is normal here for wedding parties to go to various monuments for pictures and I suppose there is benefit in memorializing even the darkest parts of history. Much better than forgetting.
St. Cyril's Church
Back towards the city center, our second stop was at St. Cyril's church. This church dates from the 1100's making it almost as old as our neighbor St. Sophia's. Cyril's is small and looks like a heavy-walled fortress from the outside. Our guides said that was usual as medieval nobles constructed churches for both spiritual and physical protection. The interior was covered with murals, a few dating from the earliest days of the church. Over the centuries, the walls were covered and repainted a number of times. A friend of Sveta and Misha's was our docent for the tour here and she said the historical problem has always been whether or not to preserve the newer paintings on the surface layers or remove them in search of older artifacts.
No matter which layer we were looking at, the feeling of history was very real. In one of the back areas, we were shown 12th Century surfaces complete with "graffiti" carved into the painting. We were told the graffiti are basically as old as the painting and were requests for divine intervention on behalf of the carver. My picture is not clear but maybe you can see the writing on the upper right side.
In some of the upper areas of the church, the murals date from the 18th century and are quite modern. One artist did much of the work and his work was famous throughout the Orthodox world.. Even today, the colors and realism are impressive.
We ended the day with a nice, but unphotographed, pastry shop not far from the church. It was a small place, on the ground floor of a very standard Soviet-era apartment block but the goodies were wonderful. Even this stop was a reminder that there is more to Kyiv as a city than just our normal city-center museums, restaurants and shops. Maybe not quite the neighborhoods of New York or San Francisco yet, but Kyiv "raions" can have some interesting gems.
Regards,
John and Marianne
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Diary originally sent January 7, 2000. Reformatted for website May 19, 2001.
This page created on a Macintosh using PhotoPage by John A. Vink.