‘When the World is Falling Apart’, proposal for Babyn Yar Memorial, 1965

For the Babyn Yar Memorial competition of 1965, the artistic duo of ARWM, consisting of Ada Rybachuk (1931–2010) and Volodymyr Melnychenko (b. 1932), developed a design proposal that featured a space surrounded by massive rough concrete blocks bearing the traces of bullets. The site where the bodies were burned was left bare and surrounded by concentric circles, creating a low elevated platform. This somewhat abstractionist project garnered widespread support when the competition designs were exhibited at the Kyiv House of Architects in December 1965. Despite this acclaim, the memorial project did not move beyond the competition stage, with subsequent discussions causing controversy and revealing many antisemitic attitudes, so that the commemoration initiative was left unfulfilled. In December 1967, Janusz Kaczmarski (1931–2009) organized an exhibition of ARWM artworks at the Artists’ House in Warsaw, where the design sketches for the Babyn Yar Memorial proposal were shown for the first time.