Herzog to visit Ukraine for 80th anniversary of Babyn Yar massacre

• Author: GREER FAY CASHMAN
• Published date: 28 September 2021

Herzog will be one of the speakers at the commemoration ceremony on October 6, which comes 30 years after the first such ceremony was permitted.

At that time a message was sent by Herzog's father, president Chaim Herzog, who did not attend, and was read out by an Israeli diplomat. The Israeli delegation at that time was led by education minister Zevulun Hammer of the National Religious Party.

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The memorial ceremony next week will take place at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv, which is currently under construction, under the chairmanship of former Israel government minister and former chairman of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky, who was born in Ukraine. There are other Jewish monuments on the site.

Herzog's delegation will include several members of Knesset, the most prominent of whom will be Minister for Jerusalem Affairs and Minister for Housing and Construction MK Ze'ev Elkin, who was also born in Ukraine and is currently the government liaison to Kyiv.

Also attending the Babi Yar commemoration ceremony will be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German President Frank Walter Steinmeier, who last year attended events in Israel, Poland, and Germany to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

In the course of his visit, Herzog will meet privately with Zelensky and with...