German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited the sites of atrocities committed by the Nazis in Ukraine during their occupation on Wednesday.
He started on Wednesday afternoon in the Ukrainian village of Koryukivka where, in March 1943, Nazi soldiers killed 6,700 people over two days in retaliation for an attack on a nearby German garrison.
He later went to the site of the Babyn Yar massacre where the Nazis killed over 33,000 Jewish residents in the city of Kyiv over two days in September 1941 — 80 years ago.
President Steinmeier, along with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were set to inaugurate a yet-to-be-completed memorial center dedicated to the stories of Eastern European Jews.
Steinmeier: We must do more to remember
His first stop on his visit was a memorial for those who were killed by the Nazis in the village of Koryukivka. Steinmeier is the first head of state to visit the destroyed village.
The president called for more to efforts to be made to commemorate the victims of national socialism throughout the former Soviet Union.
“The sites of National Socialist crimes in Ukraine are barely marked on the map of our memories,” he said. “And that is why we need to illuminate the blind spots in our memory. We must make common cause with Ukrainians in sharpening our memory.”
ab/msh (AFP, dpa)
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-president-steinmeier-marks-nazi-massacres-in-ukraine/a-59426081?maca=en-rss-en-ger-1023-xml-atom