Babyn Yar Synagogue

Manuel Herz Architects - Kyiv, Ukraine - 2021

Key words: Book, Community, Holocaust, Memory, Pop-up, Prayer, Torah

SYNAGOGUE interior - Photography: © Iwan Baan

The Babyn Yar Synagogue in Kyiv is the first realised intervention of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Foundation and occupies one of Europe’s most tragic sites of mass killing. Conceived both as a memorial and as a space of living worship, the project grapples with the dual task of remembrance and renewal. Its design takes inspiration from the metaphor of the book - both the Siddur or Torah and the playful pop-up book - emphasising communal reading, unfolding, and discovery. The building itself mirrors this metaphor: a flat wooden structure that, when manually opened by the congregation, expands into a three-dimensional synagogue. This ritualistic act of unfolding transforms architecture into a participatory process, fusing memory, liturgy, and embodied action.

Material and symbolic choices deepen the project’s resonance. Constructed from centuries-old Ukrainian oak, the building anchors contemporary Jewish presence to pre-massacre history. Walls inscribed with central prayers, alongside blessings for transformation and hope, draw from historic synagogues, while the painted ceiling recalls lost interiors and recreates the night sky of September 29, 1941. Its position on a light wooden platform deliberately avoids disturbing the sacred ground below.

Critically, the synagogue transcends static monumentality. Instead, it embodies a dynamic, collective memorial that privileges ritual, fragility, and humility, asserting presence without domination.