Trudy Gold
The History of Babi Yar
Summary
Babi Yar is a ravine in Kiev, Ukraine, the site of the largest single massacre of Jews during the Holocaust. Trudy Gold details the history and background of the massacre, reflecting on the site as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust and its important reminder of the horrors of anti-Semitism and hate.
Trudy Gold
Trudy Gold was the CEO of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and a founding member of the British delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Throughout her career she taught modern Jewish history at schools, universities, and to adult groups and ran seminars on Holocaust education in the UK, Eastern Europe, and China. She also led Jewish educational tours all over the world. Trudy was the educational director of the student resources “Understanding the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Explained” and the author of The Timechart History of Jewish Civilization.
Because later on, as the war is advancing, remember they blew up Sobibor, they are trying to cover up their deeds. Later on, Himmler is trying to negotiate with the Allies.
Yes, a few. But you’ve got to remember in the Soviet Union, it’s the Great Patriotic War, and we have to create a new society. And don’t forget, in the cynical West, how many top Nazis. Look, they tried the major perpetrators. But West Germany had to live, they had to continue, and the majority of them, everyone was a member of the Nazi party. To have any authority in Germany, what are you going to do, sack them all? Even at Wannsee, a third of the characters died in their beds from SS pensions.
I mean that all the lessons of the 20th century, if well learnt, we could have created a more just society, but unfortunately, we’re up against human nature. The reason I’m interested in many of these monsters is they’re well educated, the Einsatzgruppen, so then I have to look at what we mean by education. And certainly we do not mean a dispassionate academic education. And please don’t think I’m against academic education. Of course I’m not. But I’m also thinking about how do you revamp a system? Is it possible to do it through education? Or you might well say that our values are inculcated so young. It is not my field, but I talk to psychologists and I sometimes have emails, and in fact, Mrs. Hellis has emailed me with some incredibly important information. I don’t know if she’s listening, but I’m truly grateful to her for the information she’s given me on childhood and development. So it’s such a big subject. How do you create the kind of just citizen that we want to be in our countries? How do we create a just democratic system?