October 1, 2018. Holocaust Monument Opening at the Soshne Forest Killing Site
Tsal Kaplun Foundation based in New York, USA and State Administration of Izyaslav rayon of Khmelnitskyi oblast will hold a ceremony of opening a Monument dedicated to victims of Holocaust in Izayslav.
The opening will take place on October 25, 2018 at 1 p.m. local time.
This memorial will be the first in a series of monuments funded by the Tsal Kaplun Foundation (TKF) to honor the Holocaust victims and to ensure that the horrors of the Holocaust are not forgotten.
The representatives from US, Israel and Latvian Embassies, leaders of mayor Ukrainian Jewish organizations, Rabbis from the numerous congregations and local administration will attend the opening ceremony.
Over 2,000 Jews from Izyaslav and the surrounding areas were killed at this site. Records from Yad Vashem Holocaust Center contain an account of these tragic events: “In June 1942, Ukrainian auxiliary policemen surrounded Izyaslav ghetto and ordered its inmates to come out of their homes. 137 specialists – artisans and craftsmen, with their families – were allowed to remain in the ghetto. The rest of the Jews were loaded onto trucks and taken to the forest near the village of Soshne, several kilometers west of the town. There they were shot to death in several large pits by a German unit and some Ukrainian policemen. On January 1, 1943 the artisans and craftsmen who had been held in one building were surrounded by Germans and Ukrainian policemen. Those who tried to run away were shot to death on the spot. The others were taken by truck to the
same site and shot to death with sub-machine guns.”
same site and shot to death with sub-machine guns.”
The monument for Soshne killing site (pictured on the left as a CAD rendering) was designed by the prominent Latvian sculptor Gleb Panteleev,and manufactured in the Zhitomir region. Gleb Panteleev describes his approach to the monument design as follows: “The sculpture is an attempt to express the conflict of chaos and harmony, to understand that harmony is effort and work. And chaos is the surrender to the Beast. The lower, roughly perforated part of the obelisk is in the zone of chaos. The upper symbolizes harmony and the victory of the mind”.
