Songs for Babyn Yar

The musical theatre performance Songs for Babyn Yar weaves together languages, cultures and stories to uncover forgotten tales from one of the most devastating periods in Ukraine’s history.

September 1941: in the ravine of Babyn Yar on the outskirts of Kyiv, Nazi occupying forces murder more than 33,000 Jews in just two days. During the following two years, another 100,000 people are murdered in Babyn Yar.

November 2021: eighty years later, three Ukrainian musicians – Yuriy Gurzhy, Svetlana Kundish and Mariana Sadovska – embark on a journey into their shared history. Drawing on survivors’ testimonies, traditional Yiddish and Ukrainian folk songs, poetry and stories, they wrest the memory of the victims of Babyn Yar from oblivion.

A Dash Arts production in cooperation with the Ukrainian Institute (Kyiv) and the Goethe-Institut. Supported by the Maria Björnson Memorial Fund, the Shoresh Charitable Trust, the Goethe-Institut London, the German Federal Agency for Civic Education and the Münchner Kammerspiele as part of their Sisterhood Kyiv-Munich project. Recommended by the 2022 Jewish Culture Days in Munich