Babi Yar

14 hrs. 49 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Anatoliy Kuznetsov

Narrator Yury Rudnik

Description

Everything in this book is true. When I told episodes of this story to different people, they all, unanimously, insisted that I should write a book. But I’ve been writing it for a long time. The first version, you could say, was written when I was 14. In a thick, homemade notebook, I—starving, frantic, as a boy—wrote down, while events were still fresh, everything I had seen, heard, and knew about Babyn Yar. I had no idea why I was doing it, but it seemed to me that it was necessary—so nothing would be forgotten. That notebook was called “Babyn Yar,” and I hid it from other eyes.
After the war, in the Soviet Union there was an upsurge of anti-Semitism: a campaign against so-called “cosmopolitanism” began; Jewish doctors-“poisoners” were arrested, and the name “Babyn Yar” became almost taboo. One day, while cleaning, my mother found my notebook, read it, cried over it, and advised me to keep it safe. She was the first to say that someday I would have to write a book. The more I lived, the more I became convinced that I was obliged to do it.
Many times I started writing an ordinary documentary novel, but without any hope that it would be published.