News
26.10.2023
Victor Pinchuk has accepted the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights on behalf of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center
October 26, 2023. -- The Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk has accepted the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights on behalf of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. The University of Connecticut awards the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights biennially to an individual or group who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of international justice and global human rights.
Through this award, the organizers aim to acknowledge the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center's dedicated work in acquiring, studying, and sharing information about the Babyn Yar tragedy. This remains particularly resonant even more than 80 years after those crimes amid the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine and the aggressor’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“It is a very big honor for me to receive on behalf of Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorical Center the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights. I accept this prize - on behalf of a big team, a great team, mostly of young Ukrainians, who work on the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorical Center. And of our country Ukraine, a country which wants the truth about Babyn Yar to be told”, said Victor Pinchuk at the award ceremony.
Emphasizing the significance of the Dodd’s Prize in today's context, when Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine as well as in light of the terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, Victor Pinchuk also stressed: “Babyn Yar in Ukraine tells us not about the past only, but it cries: Stop Genocide Now. In Ukraine, in Israel. Babyn Yar is not over, unless we are ready for Stop Now”.
Notes to the editor:
For about two decades Victor Pinchuk has contributed to increasing public awareness and understanding of the Holocaust, particularly among younger generations.Victor Pinchuk Foundation supports the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center project to honor the memory of all those who were killed in September 1941 by the Nazis at Babyn Yar. The mass murder of Jews and non-Jews on the territory of Ukraine and the former Soviet Union is not sufficiently understood worldwide.
Among other projects were also “Spell Your Name”, a documentary film co-executive-produced by Steven Spielberg and Victor Pinchuk; educational guide on the Holocaust for schools; “Shoah by Bullets: the Mass Shootings of Jews in Ukraine 1941-1944”, an exhibition based on the work of French Catholic priest Father Patrick Desbois, which was presented in partnership with the Memorial de la Shoah and Yahad – In Unum, and other programs and activities.
The Thomas J. Dodd Prize commemorates the distinguished public service career of Thomas J. Dodd, who served as Executive Trial Counsel at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, as U.S. Representative from 1953 to 1957 and as Connecticut’s Senator from 1959 to 1971. Thomas Dodd dedicated his entire public life to fighting against the violation and suppression of human rights in the United States and abroad.
