Skokie, IL, Sept. 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Launched in advance of the 81stSt To mark the anniversary of the Babiy Yar massacre, the Illinois Holocaust Museum has created a new online experience that tells the little-known story of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union as told through the stories of Chicago-area survivors and their families. This new page includes an online exhibition; a research page with access to the museum’s complete collection of photos and objects related to the Holocaust in the Soviet Union; a stories page developed in partnership with Holocaust Community Services, highlighting individual stories from Chicago-area survivors and rescuers; and a page dedicated to the activities of educators and students in secondary education.
“The history of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union has been largely ignored and forgotten, and in some cases intentionally obliterated,” says Leah Rauch, director of education at the Illinois Holocaust Museum. “But more than 2.5 million of the victims of the Holocaust were Soviet Jews. It is long past time to start talking about what happened in the German-occupied Soviet territories in our classrooms and online.”
Included in this comprehensive history of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union are the key moments that led to Operation Barbarossa and the Baby Jar massacre. One of the largest military invasions in modern history, Operation Barbarossa, began on June 22, 1941 and paved the way for the mass murder of Jews in the Soviet Union. Just months after the invasion, on September 29–30, 1941, over 33,000 Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in Babiy Yar, a ravine near German-occupied Kyiv, Ukraine. It was the largest single mass grave on Soviet territory. Earlier this year, the Babiy Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv, Ukraine, was bombed by Russian forces.
In addition, the museum will tell the story of Soviet Jewry after the Holocaust, the “refuseniks” who were often treated harshly for attempting to emigrate, and the activism and international support that led to…
