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On the 29th-3Oth September 1941, the Nazis and their henchmen led the 70,000 Jews of Kiev - men, women and children - to Babi Yar, a ravine outside the city, where they massacred them and buried their bodies in a communal grave. This slaughtering place, the largest of many in German-occupied Russia, will long be remembered as a place of shame.
Yosef Kuzkovski, in his unforgettable painting "Babi Yar" (the "Last Way") graphically depicts the last hours of a group of Jews being led to their deaths - their terror; their fear of the unknown fate awaiting them; their hope that "maybe it will not..."; their resignation to their fate; the sadism of their guards who hem their victims in with guns and vicious guard dogs.
The painting was purchased for the nation and hangs in the Knesset - Israel's Parliament building. The artist Yosef Kuzkovski, was born in Russia in 1902 and studied art at the Kiev Academy of Arts. He achieved recognition in Russia as an outstanding artist and held numerous one-man shows. After a protracted fight for the right to leave Russia and immigrate to Israel, he finally attained his goal in 1969, only to die a few months after his arrival in his new homeland.
