World Jewish leaders participated this week in a ceremony at the site of the Babi Yar massacre in Kiev, where a new memorial is to be constructed.

Members of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel, meeting in Kiev, were among those who attended the June 24 ceremony.

A model of the memorial was unveiled a day earlier. Construction is scheduled to begin in the next few months and expected to take approximately 21⁄2 years to complete. The site will display victims’ clothing and belongings, documents from the Nazi archives and other items. A Jewish center and synagogue are intended to symbolize the revival of Jewish life.

More than 33,700 Ukrainian Jews were killed over two days in September 1941 when occupying Nazi troops forced local Jews into a ravine at Babi Yar and shot them to death. The Nazis also murdered thousands of others there. — jta