Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute now has the "Stumbling block”. The ceremony of its laying in the sidewalk near the State Polytechnic Museum took place on October 8. This "Stone" "is dedicated to the memory of Georgii Karlovych Brief, a university lecturer who was shot dead with his wife at the end of September 1941 in Babyn Yar.
The foundation was held as part of the project to honor the memory of Kyiv victims of Nazism "One stone, one life - 80 stumbling blocks for Kyiv", timed to the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy. It was initiated by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Ukraine, and implemented by the NGO "Ukrainian Center for the Study of Holocaust History" with the support of the Kyiv City State Administration.
Who was Georgii Karlovych Brief, whose name is now immortalized at the university, and how did he die?
He was born in 1885 in Kyiv. His father renounced French citizenship in the late 1870s and became a cittzen of the Russian Empire.
The family lived poor, but Georgii studied at the 4th Kyiv Gymnasium, after which in 1903 he entered the engineering faculty of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. However, he did not have to study here for a long time - in 1905 he was expelled for non-payment of tuition fees. However, the thirst for knowledge prevailed, and the following year he resumed at the institute. Training had to be interrupted from time to time - it was necessary to earn a living. Eventually, in 1907, he had to leave the institute.
During the First World War, George Brief served in the army, was a non-commissioned officer ("freelance"), from 1917 to 1918 he worked as a senior technician in the District of Railways.
His pedagogical activity began in 1921, when he began to teach mathematics, physics and technical mechanics (despite the fact that he did not have a diploma of higher education, general theoretical and practical training was, apparently, very thorough) at the Kyiv Mechanical College. He later held the position of assistant director - head of the training unit, head of production and training workshops. In 1929, Georgii Brief moved to the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (since 1934 - Industrial), where he first worked as a full-time teacher of mathematics, inspector of educational affairs, head of the production and methodological sector, and from 1935 served as deputy director of the institute. educational part.
Already in adulthood, he married a woman who was Jewish. Together with Rosalia Illivna, he went to Babyn Yar. There are testimonies of people who saw the couple at the intersection of Melnikova (now Yuri Ilyenko) and Pugacheva (now Akademika Romodanova) streets, where chains of German soldiers met columns of Kyiv Jews and no longer let them out of this corridor of death.
Georgii Karlovych Brief overcame his last journey as a truly noble man. Kyiv citizens then talked about him for a long time. These memories remain in the memoirs. Kyiv doctor Valentin Terno, who during the Nazi occupation lived right next to the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute - on the 3rd Dachnaya Street (now - Metalistov Street), in his book "Ragged memories of a strange childhood" wrote: "During the occupation, there were deaf rumors in the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute about the tragic death in Babin Yar of a couple - employees of the institute. His wife, a young Jew, worked as a librarian before the war, and her husband taught some discipline and was a pure-blooded but Russified German. “
Valentyn Terno also points out the last address of Georgy Brif - a communal apartment of the building of the teaching staff №5 on the territory of the institute. Prior to the reconstruction in 1991, it consisted of seven rooms, two of which housed the Brief family.
Then again the word of the memoirist: "On the fateful day of September 29, 1941. Georgii Karlovych, apparently not allowing the thought of preparing a terrible action, accompanied his wife to a designated gathering place for Jews… The couple did not return to the apartment, and no one ever saw them again. However, there were witnesses who claimed that a tall, intelligent-looking man, having reached the corridor of two ranks of the SS and realizing the doom of the situation, shouted frantically: "It's not the Germans! I'm German! “ Gently embracing his young wife, who fell to him, he crossed the threshold of the gorge with his head held high, which led to nothingness ... "
The First Secretary of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Ukraine, the Head of the Department of Culture, Education and National Minorities Katharina Schaupp-Karmann and the Project Manager of the Department of Culture, Education and National Minorities of the Embassy Kateryna Yesikova, Vitaliy Bobrov, Head of Educational Programs of the Ukrainian Center for the Study of Holocaust History, and Yevhenia Kifenko, Project Coordinator; Valentyn Mondryivskyi, Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration, First Deputy Chairman of the Solomyansk Regional State Administration Oleksandr Smyk, Svetlana Timkina, Vice-Rector of the National Aviation University for Humanitarian Policy and Innovation, with a team of Georgii Brief biography researchers from NAU took part in the ceremony of laying the Stumbling Block in memory of Georgii Brief. ,, And, of course, a large group of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute employees and students headed by the rector of the university Michael Zgurovsky. And Georgii Brief's relatives - Nadiya Nazarova, Vladislav Kornienko and Petro Bolotskykh.
"It is symbolic that this " Stumbling block “ is laid at the university, where young people who lead an interesting and fun student life, noticing this stone, will stop and think about the uniqueness of each human destiny and the inadmissibility of repeating the tragedy of Babyn Yar in the future," said Michael Zgurovsky, addressing the participants of the ceremony.
According to Katarina Schaupp-Karmann, the memory of Georgii Brief's "Stumbling Stone" is one of the first ten such memorials, which were laid in late September - early October to the 80th anniversary of the tragedy of Babyn Yar, of the eighty that will be in Kyiv.
"With this 'Stumbling block' you are laying a special memorial," she said. - And it is our joint responsibility with you to return the names of those people who died in Babyn Yar to our daily meetings with history. "Because the Stumbling blocks are laid in a public space where you and I can see them every day, we bring back the stories of these people and, at the same time, meet the stories of these people."