Solo show examines Babi Yar Massacre
When Corey Weinstein visited the Babi Yar Jewish Memorial near Kiev, Ukraine, in 2008, “something snapped open inside me — a curtain parted,” he says in his show, “Erased: Babi Yar, the SS, and Me.”
During the Holocaust, Babi Yar was the site of the single deadliest massacre of Jews — it was by gunfire — and Weinstein, he continues in his piece, “knew almost nothing about it,” despite being a Jew with Ukrainian ancestry. Neither his family — he grew up in Chicago in the 1950s — nor his rabbi talked about such things, probably in an effort to shield him.
“Erased” chronicles Weinstein’s reckoning with the past via both storytelling and music; Weinstein is an accomplished clarinet player, and he’s accompanied by singers Saralie Pennington and Tom Herz.
The performance on Friday, Sept. 30, falls on the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar Massacre.