Ukraine unveiled Friday a synagogue built of wood and designed to unfold like a pop-up book at a site commemorating the victims of one of the single biggest massacres of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.
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The colorful new synagogue is part of a memorial project for the victims of a massacre where Nazi German forces shot dead an estimated 34,000 Jewish men, women and children on Sept. 29-30, 1941, in the Babi Yar ravine located on the edge of the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
The opening of the synagogue coincided with Ukraine marking its first Day of Remembrance for Ukrainians who saved Jews during World War II.
"Their feat is an example of humanity and self-sacrifice," President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted in honor of the commemoration.
The synagogue was designed by Swiss architects. The creators wanted it to remind visitors of a prayer book, a Bible, or the magic of a pop-up book where "new worlds unfold that we could not imagine before. In a sense, the pop-up book can act as a metaphor for the synagogue," they said in a statement on their website.
Ilya Khrzhanovsky, artistic director of the Babi Yar complex, told Reuters that only old oak was used to build the synagogue, collected from all regions of Ukraine.
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