Memorial

At a meeting in late August 2001, the Kharkiv Oblast administration decided to resume the construction of the memorial. The oblast authorities supervised the construction process. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine allotted 600,000 hryvnas for the construction. Contributions have also been made by city and oblast administrations, as well as by sponsors.

On December 13, 2002, the President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, opened the memorial.

The main part of the memorial is a monument symbolizing a synagogue with the Ten Commandments between its columns; most notably: "Do not kill". The memorial begins with a monument stylized under a Jewish menorah. A road leads from a black menorah to a white main building of the complex. Thousands of Kharkiv Jews took their last path along it in 1941-1942. These dates are found on the wall of the main arched building. Underground is a hall of memory; the wall will bear the names of the victims who are known to have died.

The territory includes two burials area. One trenches is 100 metres long and the other is 60 m. The Kharkov archives contain data of fifteen thousand victims. However, the "Drobitsky Yar" foundation considers the number of the dead to be thirty thousand.

180 tons of a Zhytomyr granite was used in the construction of the memorial. This is the same material that was used for Lenin's Mausoleum. Due to the granite's particular qualities (it has reddish veins), the stones lying at menorah's foot seem to bleed.

Museum

On January 27, 2002, a new exposition in the Kharkiv City Holocaust Museum was officially opened. The exposition was created in December 2001, when Kharkiv commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Drobitsky Yar tragedy. Excursions to the ravine had already been held before, but the official openning was on January 27. Six candles were lit in memory of the six million Jews, who died in the Holocaust.

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