Kyiv honors Holocaust survivor who exposed Nazi crimes at Babyn Yar and his murdered family
Three memorial stones honoring a Holocaust survivor who helped document Nazi atrocities at Babyn Yar and his wife and young son, who were murdered there, were unveiled in Kyiv on November 6.
The small brass-plated markers were installed in the sidewalk at 51 Antonovycha Street in memory of Froim, Sara and Abram Vilkis, hromadske reported from the ceremony.
Froim Vilkis, born in Odesa in 1910, was captured by German forces during World War II and imprisoned at the Syrets concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Kyiv.
In 1943, the Nazis forced him and other prisoners to exhume and burn the bodies of people murdered at Babyn Yar, a ravine where German forces carried out mass executions, in an attempt to conceal evidence of their crimes.
Vilkis was among the prisoners who escaped during the night of September 28–29, 1943. After Kyiv was liberated from Nazi occupation, he testified about atrocities committed at Syrets and Babyn Yar. A filmed recording with sound of his testimony from 1944 has survived.
His subsequent fate is unknown after 1944.
His wife, Sara, and their young son, Abram, were killed during the mass shootings of Jews at Babyn Yar on September 29–30, 1941.
The family's history was reconstructed by history teacher Maksym Panin and three students from Odesa, who examined archival documents and historical records.
The memorials are part of the international Stolpersteine (Stumbling Stones) initiative, which places individual markers in sidewalks near locations associated with people persecuted by the Nazi regime.
The Kyiv project, titled One Stone, One Life: 80 Stumbling Stones for Kyiv, is being implemented by the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies at the initiative of the German Embassy in Ukraine, with support from the Kyiv city authorities.
