Thursday, October 01, 2026
From Ian:
85 years later: Babyn Yar and the fight against deliberate erasure
85 years later: Babyn Yar and the fight against deliberate erasure
In 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote about the absence of a monument at Babyn Yar. His poem became a protest against the silencing of memory and against antisemitism.The Palestinian Inquisition
In 1991, a menorah-shaped memorial to the Jewish victims was erected at the site, but the road to establishing a comprehensive memorial center was long. Memorials now stand there, yet the war has halted the momentum of construction and development.
Research continues, even under fire.
In September 2025, the center reported that 1,031 previously unidentified victims’ names had been added to its database since the outbreak of the war. Birth certificates, adoption applications, and court testimony are restoring identities once thought lost.
In the face of erasure, each name restores a person to memory.
A line connects Soviet erasure to Russian propaganda today. Once again, history is subordinated to the needs of the state.
The Kremlin justifies its invasion of Ukraine with the false claim that the country must be “denazified,” exploiting the memory of the victory over Nazism.
A study by Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Oleksiy Makukhin, and Violetta Seleznova, published this month in Eastern European Holocaust Studies, analyzes 4,263 Russian television broadcasts from 2012 to 2024.
The researchers show how “Nazism” became a label used to delegitimize Ukraine and justify military action against it. This, too, is a form of erasure: blurring the historical meaning of Nazism, pushing its victims to the margins, and replacing their story with a narrative that serves the state.
Then, the victims’ Jewish identity was suppressed; today, the memory of their murderers is exploited to justify aggression.
Through my work in Holocaust education and remembrance with March of the Living, I have learned the power of encountering the places themselves. Visiting a town, a synagogue, or a killing site connects historical knowledge to human lives.
To understand what was lost, we must know what existed: families, culture, spiritual life, and daily routines. This is how we counter erasure beyond commemorative ceremonies: by learning about communities, reading testimonies, and remembering names.
Babyn Yar should be a gateway to understanding Eastern European Jewry and its world, while also bearing witness to its destruction.
Ukraine’s efforts to confront this chapter of its past deserve recognition, as does its perseverance in the work of remembrance after more than four years of a devastating war.
On the 85th anniversary of the massacre, our responsibility is to protect memory against erasure, distortion, and manipulation.
That means returning to the facts, supporting research, opening archives, and making their findings accessible; teaching the Holocaust by bullets and learning about the communities that lived before they were murdered.
Behind the name Babyn Yar are tens of thousands of human beings, and beyond it are millions whose stories were buried in the soil of Eastern Europe.
Our duty is to remember their names, their lives, and their Jewish identity, and to ensure that no regime succeeds in bending their story to its own purposes.
Hasan Piker interviews politicians and other public figures and helps establish which answers are acceptable. Having likened liberal Zionists to 'liberal Nazis', he plays at being the grand inquisitor, the arbiter of correct beliefs. If any attachment to Israel puts you in the heretical category, what room is left for disagreement?Adam Brody blasted as ‘ignorant Jew’ over Palestine stance by former ‘Nobody Wants This’ Rabbi consultant
You don’t even have to be Jewish to find yourself before this tribunal. Ask Ed Sheeran. His crisis began when Macklemore was removed from Sheeran’s tour following pressure from venue owners over the rapper’s anti-Israel statements and history of anti-Semitic imagery.
Soon Sheeran’s own beliefs were on trial. A picture of him meeting a former Israeli hostage was enough to ‘prove’ he was irredeemable. And when he condemned the October 7 terrorist attacks while also calling the situation in Gaza catastrophic, this too was evidence against him. For some critics, acknowledging suffering on both sides was offensive. British MP Zarah Sultana accused him of ‘both-sidesing genocide’. Apparently, the problem with his compassion was extending it to all humans.
Saturday Night Live UK then turned his reluctance to take sides into a recurring joke. In one sketch, a fictional Sheeran remained unwilling to choose even during a conflict between humans and robots. The joke depended on the audience accepting that his neutrality was cowardice. When comedy writers can’t conceive of there legitimately being two sides to a two-sided conflict, that’s troublesome.
Sometimes you don’t even have to give any answer to become a victim of the inquisition. You just have to sit next to someone who gave the ‘wrong’ one. Pop singer Pink faced an immense backlash after criticising Macklemore’s concert remarks. Then Elizabeth Banks and Amy Adams were photographed sitting with her at the US Open. People began questioning them, too. In a Reddit discussion of the photographs, commenters condemned their friendliness toward Pink and flooded their Instagram accounts with hateful comments. Watching tennis with someone deemed ‘impure’ was enough to start the examination. The warning extends beyond what you’re allowed to say to who you’re allowed to be seen with.
You don’t even have to help anyone to pass the test. A person can donate to Palestinians privately and still fail if they don’t use the required language. Another person can make the proper declaration and be celebrated without being asked to do anything more. The words become the whole point.
The celebrity inquisition doesn’t need everyone to believe what they say. It only needs everyone to know what happens if they don’t say the right words.
‘Put me down for not getting burnt at the stake.’
Adam Brody has been lambasted by former “Nobody Wants This” technical consultant, Rabbi Steve Leder, who called the actor an “ignorant Jew” over his comments on Palestine.
“Hi Adam, you might not remember me. My name is Rabbi Steve Leder, and I was the technical advisor for Season 1 of ‘Nobody Wants This,’” he began in a social media video, responding to Brody’s recently published comments to GQ — in which he referred to Israel’s attack on Gaza as a genocide.
“My job was to make sure that your character was authentic and that everything in Season 1 about Judaism was authentic,” he went on.
“Your pronouncement the other day about a genocide in Gaza was truly shocking, not only because of your misuse and mischaracterization of the word ‘genocide.’ There is no genocide in Gaza. There are genocides in other countries happening, but you failed to mention any of them.”
“You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed the other day,” Leder said.
“If you’re gonna use a word like ‘genocide,’ you oughta know what it means, he continued, calling the way Brody referred to the term as “so flippant” and “disgusting,” while likening it to “asking for a table for two at Craig’s.”
“Here’s some more technical advice: If you know nothing about something, you should say nothing about it.”
Brody previously told GQ when asked about his stance on the Isreal-Gaza conflict, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”
He added that he’s “hopeful that another administration can really do some good and correct some of these policies that are helping that situation be as awful as it is.”
In Netflix’s hit series, Brody plays Rabbi Noah Roklov, who begins an unlikely romance with a non-Jewish podcaster Joanne Williams, who is played by Kristen Bell.
