On September 29 and 30, 1941, in one of the largest mass murders of the Holocaust, German troops massacred 33,771 Jews at the vast gorge located near Kyiv known as Babi Yar (Babij Jar). During and after the war, the territory was modified, redesigned, and converted in order to remove the physical signs of genocide, including the exhumation and incineration of thousands of bodies. In large part this erasure was the result of policies implemented by the Soviet regime, which refused to accept that there had been a “special war” against Jews. 

Beginning with an explication of the mass murders and their aftermath, Antonella Salomoni examines the afterlife of a massacre whose physical remains were intentionally hidden. She focuses especially on how the arts—prose, poetry, music, architecture, and painting—shaped a collective narrative that, despite repression, played a crucial role in preserving the history and memory of the genocide.

Antonella Salomoni is a professor of contemporary history in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Calabria, where she teaches the history of human rights and social services, as well as cultures of peace. She also teaches the history of the Shoah and genocides in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna.

Antony Shugaar is a writer and translator from the Italian and the French. The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, he has been shortlisted for both the PEN and ALTA Italian translation awards. He is the English-language editor of FMR magazine.

Preface
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1 Form and Truth
2 Return, Reconstruction, Recognition
3 Transforming Space
4 Acts of Justice in Poetry, Music, Prose
5 Profane, Erase, Redeem
6 Claiming the Place
Epilogue
Notes
Index