Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) commemorates the six million Jews murdered by the Nazi regime. For Ukrainian Jews, this day involves remembering the massive destruction of local communities, such as in Maciejów, Babyn Yar, and many others. In 1941, Ukraine was home to one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe, and it was a central site of the Holocaust. Unlike what happened in Poland and elsewhere, in Ukraine the Jews were killed close to home, not deported to distant camps. Yom HaShoah is particularly difficult today and over these past few years, as survivors, and/or their descendants, continue to suffer tragedies and loss in the current conflict.
Because “we must never forget,” many descendants of Holocaust victims in Ukraine are still working to uncover the names and fates of relatives murdered in places like Maciejów, a city in Northwestern Ukraine. In the fall of 1942, the ghetto of Maciejów was surrounded by the German Rural Order Police and Ukrainian auxiliary policemen. The Jews, mainly women, children, and elderly people, were gathered at the school building and then taken outside the town where they were shot to death at the lime quarry by Nazi soldiers.
Tragically, similar stories played out all across Ukraine. By the end of the war, 1.5 million Jews had been killed--approximately 60% of the country’s Jewish population. We especially remember the people of Ukraine on Yom HaShoah, along with all the victims of the Holocaust, and survivors, their children and their families throughout the world.
To quote the late Yevgeny Yevtushenko, in his poem about Babyn Yar: “All screams in silence; I take off my cap and feel that I am slowly turning gray. And I, too, have become a soundless cry over the thousands that lie buried here. I am each old man slaughtered, each child shot. None of me will forget.”
Indeed, none of us will ever forget.
Read more about Yom HaShoah 2026 here.
