For the 85th anniversary of the Babi Yar tragedy in Kyiv, not just one ceremony and not just one memorial day are being prepared. The National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babi Yar” presented a program that begins on September 28, 2026, and continues almost until the end of October. A round table, an exhibition on the history of the Roma, an interfaith prayer, a new edition of Anatoly Kuznetsov, a digital archive, books, a museum forum. Another project — an audio guide — is still without a final date.
Author: Pavel Shveiko
The central historical point here remains the same. On September 29 and 30, 1941, 33,771 Kyiv Jews were shot in Babi Yar. This number refers specifically to the two days of mass murder and comes from German documentation. The killings in Babi Yar did not end there: during the Nazi occupation, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, psychiatric hospital patients, and other people were also shot here. Historians estimate the total number of victims at about 100,000.
For the Israeli reader, there is another detail that is better understood immediately. The National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babi Yar,” which publishes the current program, is a state Ukrainian institution. And the Holocaust Memorial Center “Babi Yar,” associated with many well-known projects, archives, and a new synagogue on the memorial’s territory, is a separate structure. In the news, their names are often shortened to one “Babi Yar,” hence the confusion.
September 28. “Babi Yar: 85 Years Later”
The first event will take place on September 28 at 13:00 in Kyiv Hall. It is a round table “Babi Yar: 85 Years Later,” initiated by the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience.
The very name of the state body sounds unusual to an Israeli. Simply put, it is a Ukrainian service that deals with issues of national minorities, interethnic relations, religious communities, and freedom of religion. Therefore, its participation in such a discussion is quite logical: Babi Yar has long gone beyond just the historical study of 1941. It is also a question of how the state remembers the destroyed communities today.
The organizers have not yet disclosed all the participants of the round table in detail. Therefore, it is not worth attributing any statements or conclusions to it in advance. The topic and the framework are known — what happened to the memory of Babi Yar 85 years later.
September 29. Exhibition “INVISIBLE. The Past and Present of the Roma”
The next day, on September 29 at 12:00, the exhibition “INVISIBLE. The Past and Present of the Roma” will open in the Winter Garden of the Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture.
It is being made together with ARCA — the Agency for the Advocacy of Roma Culture, the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, and KNUCA, with the support of the German Embassy in Kyiv and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.
At first glance, the question may arise: why is a separate large exhibition dedicated to the Roma in the Babi Yar anniversary program? Because the history of the place itself does not end with the shooting of Kyiv Jews on September 29–30.
Roma were also victims of the Nazi extermination policy, and people of Roma origin were killed in Babi Yar. The exhibition, however, tells not only about World War II. The organizers combine archival evidence and the history of genocide with the life of Roma in modern Ukraine.
That is, it is not an attempt to mix different groups of victims into one common mass. Rather, on the contrary — to show who exactly was destroyed and why. For the history of Babi Yar, this is fundamental: the Soviet system for decades preferred a more convenient depersonalized formula about the dead “Soviet citizens.”
September 29. Interfaith prayer in Babi Yar itself
On the same day, on September 29 at 17:00, an interfaith prayer event in memory of the victims of Babi Yar will take place directly in the National Historical and Memorial Reserve.
It is held together with the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory and the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience.
The interfaith format here is not accidental. Jews were the main group of victims of the largest shooting on September 29–30, 1941, and it was these events that made Babi Yar one of the symbols of the Holocaust. But later, people from other groups were killed in the same place. Therefore, representatives of Judaism and various Christian denominations are present at memorial ceremonies.
There is also a direct bridge to Israel in the current anniversary. On September 29, a memorial ceremony for the 85th anniversary of Babi Yar will also take place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Among the announced participants are Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan, Natan Sharansky, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Israel Yevgeny Korniychuk, and representatives of the community of immigrants from Ukraine.
NANews has already detailed this ceremony and why the 85th anniversary of Babi Yar in 2026 simultaneously becomes a Ukrainian and Israeli event.
September 30. New Ukrainian edition of Kuznetsov’s “Babi Yar”
There is a discrepancy with this program item.
The publication of the National Reserve states October 30, 18:00. But a separate fresh announcement of the presentation of the new edition of Anatoly Kuznetsov indicates September 30, also at 18:00, in the Kyiv bookstore Readeat. Therefore, those planning to attend the presentation should double-check the date directly before the event.
The new edition already exists and was released specifically for the 85th anniversary. The “Phronesis” publishing house prepared the Ukrainian text translated by Oleg Protsenko, with illustrations by Matvey Weisberg. Among the presentation partners, the reserve also names the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, the communication group Ideas&Strategy, and “General Chereshnya FPV.”
And here the history of the book itself sometimes turns out to be no less important than the literary evening around it.
Anatoly Kuznetsov was born in Kyiv in 1929 and grew up in Kurenivka — very close to Babi Yar. When the mass killings began in September 1941, he was twelve. Later, as a teenager, he began recording what he saw and heard.
In 1966, “Babi Yar” was published by the Soviet magazine “Youth,” but the text underwent serious censorship. A few years later, Kuznetsov ended up in the UK and took the full version of the book on film. So the phrase “new edition” here is somewhat misleading. It is not just an old book returning — it is a text around which the debate on how to talk about Babi Yar continued for decades.
NANews detailed the history of Kuznetsov, Soviet censorship, and the new Ukrainian edition of “Babi Yar”.
It is at this point that NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency sees an important part of the entire current program. Memory is not just a wreath at a monument. Sometimes it is a book from which pages were once cut out, and sixty years later they are read again in the city where it all happened.
October 5. Launch of the Babi Yar digital archive
On October 5 at 16:00 in the “Ukraine” hotel, the pilot launch of the digital archive of the National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babi Yar” is planned.
The project partner is Research Centre Ukraine / Max Weber Foundation. The Max Weber Foundation is a German scientific organization working with international historical and humanitarian research; its Ukrainian research center appeared during the current war.
At first glance, the digital archive loses to prayer or a large exhibition in terms of emotionality. In fact, for Babi Yar, this is one of the key projects.
Because behind the known numbers, one still has to look for specific people.
The separate Holocaust Memorial Center “Babi Yar” already has extensive work with names and documents. According to data that Natan Sharansky cited in September 2026, researchers managed to establish more than 29,000 names of victims, and the array of digitized materials approached 10 million documents.
Here it is again important not to confuse the two organizations: the new archive is launched on October 5 by the state National Reserve, while the project of restoring names, which Sharansky spoke about, is led by the Holocaust Memorial Center.
About how today the names of the dead are being returned and why Natan Sharansky continues to travel for this work to Kyiv during the war, NANews told separately.
October 7. “War and Occupation. Germany and Ukraine in 1939–1945”
Another book meeting will take place on October 7 at 14:00 in the “Ukraine” hotel. There are presentations and discussions of the book “War and Occupation. Germany and Ukraine in 1939–1945” announced.
So far, this is one of the least detailed points of the program. The reserve reports the title, date, and place, but does not provide a detailed composition of the discussion in the main announcement. And here it is better to leave exactly what is known, without beautiful guesses about “what conversation will take place.”
The inclusion of such a book in the program is understandable. Babi Yar cannot be considered separately from the German occupation of Kyiv and the Nazi policy in Ukraine in general. The mass murder on September 29–30, 1941, occurred just a few days after German troops occupied the city.
October 22–23. “Memory under Occupation: Holocaust Museums in Wartime”
Here again, there is a clarification to the initial program.
The post of the National Reserve states: October 22, online. However, the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies in a separate announcement already indicates October 22–23, 2026, Kyiv. The forum is called “Memory under Occupation: Holocaust Museums in Wartime.”
It is organized by the National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babi Yar” and the Lviv Memorial Museum of Totalitarian Regimes “Territory of Terror.”
The organizers call the forum the first working meeting of Ukrainian museums, archives, and memorial institutions that deal with the memory of the Holocaust and mass killings during World War II.
And here 1941 already collides with 2026 almost without historical distance.
How to store an archive when the country is under missile and drone attacks? What to do with museum collections in territories threatened by occupation? How to continue working with the Holocaust when employees and visitors themselves live during the war? For Ukrainian museums, this is not an academic seminar about someone else’s experience.
Judging by the more recent profile announcement, the format October 22–23 in Kyiv now looks relevant. But since the initial program of the reserve speaks of online, the final technical details should still be checked closer to the forum.
Date still to be determined. Audio guide “Road of Memory”
The last project cannot yet be tied to a specific day.
The reserve is preparing an audio guide “Road of Memory” together with the RememberUs.org foundation and the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater. The project is supported by the German Embassy in Kyiv.
For a person who has never been to Babi Yar, the problem of space itself needs to be explained here. Today it is already part of a large modern Kyiv, not an empty ravine on the city outskirts, as the place looked in 1941. The territory has changed, been built up, the Soviet authorities partially changed the very relief, roads, parks, and various monuments appeared.
Therefore, it is difficult for a visitor to simply come and “see Babi Yar.” Many important points are impossible to read without explanation. The audio route is supposed to connect the modern space with what happened here before.
The presentation date of the “Road of Memory” is still being clarified.
Why so many different events around one anniversary
The entire program is stretched over almost a month, and in this, perhaps, there is logic. One ceremony on September 29 can remind of the date. It cannot show 85 years of what happened with memory afterward.
After the war, Babi Yar remained a problematic place for Soviet authorities for a long time. The Jewish identity of the main group of victims of the September shooting was not emphasized. When in 1966 people began to gather at Babi Yar themselves, Soviet authorities closely monitored what was happening. Among those who spoke then were Viktor Nekrasov and Ivan Dziuba, and Dina Pronicheva, who survived the shooting, came.
NANews detailed how the first independent gatherings of Babi Yar memory took place in 1966.
Sixty years later, the situation looks almost mirrored. The state institution itself gathers a round table. An exhibition about the Roma opens nearby. The full Kuznetsov is published in Ukrainian. The archive is planned to be digitized. Museum workers discuss how to preserve memory during the current war.
And on the same day when prayers will be held in Babi Yar in Kyiv, people will gather for a ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
It turns out to be not very even, but a lively line: Kyiv — Babi Yar — Jewish memory — Ukrainian memory — Israel. Sometimes these lines diverged for decades. In September 2026, they are again close.
And still, at the center are not the anniversary and not the big program.
September 29 and 30, 1941 — 33,771 Jews killed.
This is what made Babi Yar what it is today. And no subsequent hundred thousand, archives, museums, or round dates should blur this first point.