This volume, produced for the 75th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre, consists of three sections, covering its background, the tragedy itself, and its aftermath.

Following a preface by Norman Naimark and an introduction by the editors, the opening chapter by Mykhailo Kalnytskyi reaches all the way back to the ravine's geological formations and the first settlements in paleolithic times. Igor Shchupak covers the period on the eve of the tragedy. The contributions by Karel Berkhoff, Vitaliy Nakhmanovych, and Vladyslav Hrynevych on the massacre and its memory constitute the core of the volume. Assia Kovrigina Kreidich and Gelinada Grinchenko offer two original chapters on personal accounts and on the oral history of Babyn Yar, respectively. Grinchenko's contribution, utilizing taped survivors’ testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and the USHMM is particularly noteworthy. Iryna Zakharchuk's “Babyn Yar in Belles Lettres,” Karel Berkhoff's “Babyn Yar in Cinema,” Iryna Klimova's “Babyn Yar in Sculpture and Painting,” and Natalia Semenenko's “Babyn Yar in Music,” offer new perspectives on the depiction of the tragedy in the fine arts. A second essay by Nakhmanovych focusing on Babyn Yar in memory, is followed by two short post scripts by Shimon Redlich and some rather esoteric philosophical musings by Myroslav Marynovych. The result is an intelligently organized, well-translated collection on various aspects of the tragedy, its role in memory, society, and culture. The volume illustrates the magnitude of the long-suppressed trauma of Babyn Yar on Ukrainian society.

The volume's contributions, the editors write, “are based on documentary sources and academic research” (12). Unfortunately, there are serious shortcomings in the volume that fail to meet the standard of academic publications: no foot notes, no index, and no bibliography. This does the authors a disservice by diminishing the value of their contributions.

Norman Naimark notes in the introduction that “there is no agreement on how to represent the collaboration of Ukrainian police auxiliaries in the mass murder of the Jews” (10). Indeed, the role of local collaborators, and their agency and responsibility in the extermination of Ukrainian Jewry remain among the most difficult aspects of Ukrainian memory. One of these controversies regards the role of one collaborationist formation, the so-called Bukovinian Battalion, set up by the more conservative Melnyk wing of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, (OUN-M). In his chapter “Ukraine under Nazi Rule,” Berkhoff takes to task “some writers who say that they have established beyond doubt that the men and women of the Bukovinian Battalion were not in Kyiv during the Babyn Yar massacre—and therefore could not have been involved in it in any way” (61). Berkhoff's research compellingly shows that members of that unit arrived in Kyiv in September, corroborating this by Jewish survivor testimony. These findings also concurs with current scholarship by other scholars, working independently of one another. The claim that that unit was not in Kyiv during the massacre comes from Nakhmanovych, who contributed two extensive articles (of forty and twenty-four pages, respectively) to the volume. Unfortunately, as the volume lacks footnotes, the survivor testimony is not referenced. Nakhmanovych's now-obsolete 2007 article, however, appears as suggested “further reading” (105). An unfortunate result of the absence of references is that the volume misses the chance to address—and conclude—a historical controversy of key importance.

Co-editor Hrynevych's 48-page article “Babyn Yar after Babyn Yar,” does a fine job illuminating Soviet suppression of memory, but is less successful in keeping a distance from the instrumentalization of memory in contemporary Ukraine. Mirroring the official Ukrainian government rhetoric, he refers to the OUN as “the Ukrainian liberation movement” (153)—an argument supported neither by the output of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINP) nor by Ukrainian academia at large. Hrynevych denounces, in normative language, the “disgraceful concealment” (144) of the Holocaust during Soviet times, but has little problem with the so-called “history laws” rushed through parliament on April 9, 2015, which criminalizes “disrespect” for the OUN. “Despite some shortcomings,” he contends, “this packet of laws is of strategic importance for Ukraine's future. Today the Holocaust, which was suppressed for so long in the USSR, occupies an important role in Ukraine's politics of history” (153), and Nakhmanovych (99, 300-1), an argument again hardly supported by UINP and much of Ukrainian academia.

Another spurious claim that has entered the new Ukrainian national(ist) canon is the martyrdom of the OUN-M-affiliated poet Olena Teliha (1906–1942), who, the Ukrainian government claims, was shot in Babyn Yar. This unsubstantiated claim, which first appeared in nationalist émigré circles the late 1960s, is repeated by Hrynevych (150), Zakharchuk, (230), and Nakhmanovych (300–1). That both OUN wings called for the destruction of the Jews in 1941, that Teliha was an enthusiastic admirer of Adolf Hitler, and that the OUN-M continued its collaboration with the Nazis until 1945 is somehow overlooked by all three contributions that recall her martyrdom. In 1992, Ukrainian Nationalists set up a memorial in Babyn Yar, claiming that 621 “members of the anti-Nazi underground” of the OUN-M were shot there. In his rendering, the Nazis regarded Ukrainian nationalists as their enemies (66), depicting them, rather reductively as their victims (68). In fact, the innocence of the Bukovinian Battalion and its parent organization, the OUN-M, the martyrology of Teliha and the other 620 supposedly anti-Nazi OUNites are all components of a national mythology—well deserving of the same critical scrutiny as Soviet distortions.

Legislating history is unlikely to provide closure. Addressing the Verkhovna Rada on the 75th anniversary of the massacre of Israeli president Reuven Rivlin explicitly recalled the role of the OUN in the Holocaust and cautioned its rehabilitation and glorification.

Babyn Yar is a welcome addition to the literature, in particular in regard to culture, oral history and memory. The volume reflects that Ukraine has come a long way since the Soviet era. What is missing is a section on the airbrushing of the Babyn Yar tragedy in post-1991 Ukraine. Regarding the complexities of local perpetration, not least the role of the “Ukrainian liberation movement,” much of this discussion still lies ahead.