Toronto’s Koffler Centre for the Arts is currently presenting a small but powerful exhibition on The Synagogue at Babyn Yar. Designed by Swiss architect Manuel Herz for a client group that included Canadian architectural historian and Holocaust scholar Robert Jan Van Pelt, the building is a reminder of architecture’s fragile but poignant ability to offer hope and healing.
The woods of Babyn Yar, in western Kyiv, Ukraine, are the site of one of the Nazi regime’s worst massacres—the so-called “Holocaust of bullets.” On September 29th and 30th, 1941, 33,771 Jews were shot and killed by German troops in a deep ravine on the site. Over the following months, some 40,000 to 70,000 more Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, and others were murdered at Babyn Yar.
In 2018, a two-stage international competition was conducted to create a Holocaust museum on the site. A winning entry was selected which minimized its above-ground presence by extending four storeys underground. However, it soon became clear that because Babyn Yar was the site of mass murder, the construction would be disturbing what Jewish tradition viewed as cursed ground. The project was shelved.
Through his involvement with the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Foundation, Van Pelt suggested that a more appropriate response could be to build a synagogue—an active place of worship. He recommended Manuel Herz as the designer, based on the young architect’s innovative synagogue in Mainz, Germany.
Herz’s design hovers atop the ground, supported by shallow strip foundations, and folds away—literally—when not in use. Jews self-identify as the “People of the Book,” and Herz combined this idea with the magical wonder of his infant son’s pop-up books. The building’s slab-like form is manually opened by the congregation, unfolding to unveil the central Bimah (a reading platform for the Torah), benches, and a balcony. An open-air design aims to demystify Jewish ceremonies, and build bridges between Jewish and non-Jewish residents of Kiev.
Inside, the walls have been colourfully painted with iconography from wooden Ukrainian synagogues dating back to the 17th century, which were destroyed in WWII. Constellations on the ceiling recreate the night sky on September 29th, 1941. The building is made from oak, salvaged from barns and other structures across Ukraine: the trees are old enough to have witnessed the massacre. Wood is intentionally chosen as a fragile material that must be regularly oiled and cleaned.
The project moved quickly—going from initial commission in the fall of 2020 to realized building in only five months, in time to mark the massacre’s 80th anniversary. That year, the building was used regularly for synagogue services. Russian’s invasion of Ukraine—less than a year after the synagogue’s completion—has so far left the synagogue intact, but there has been a tragic loss of life in the vicinity.
“On 1 March 2022, rockets struck just 150 meters from the synagogue,” wrote Manuel Herz shortly after the invasion began, emphasizing that the building’s survival is nothing compared to the loss of a single human life. “Only a few months after its inauguration, the synagogue is caught up in war, which only celebrates death. What is the point of commemorating history if the lessons to be learned are forgotten and ignored so easily? It leaves me speechless, numb, and powerless.”
Nonetheless, the synagogue remains in use. “I pray for the people of Kyiv and of Ukraine, that the savagery of the war end as soon as possible,” writes Herz, “and I hope that the synagogue can eventually regain its community, so that the lessons of fragility are not drowned out by the cruel noise of war.”