Twelve talented candidates from around the former Soviet Union competed in Kiev, Ukraine, this week in the “Hallelujah” contest, a global Hebrew singing competition for Jewish talent.

For the first time, the international competition, an initiative of the World Forum of Russian-speaking Jews, the World Zionist Organization and the Hallelujah Organization, was held in the former Soviet Union.

The songs in the competition were by prominent Hebrew poets, including Chaim Nachman Bialik, Shaul Tchernichovsky, Natan Yonatan, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, and Rachel Bluwstein.

The winner was Maria Katzav Mikaterenberg, who’s studying voice in a local College in the Ukraine. In second and third place were Yelena Geleckson from Voronezh and Elana Levine from Penza.

WFRJ was established in January 2012 during the United Nations conference marking International Holocaust Day by a group of Jewish businessmen and philanthropists from the Former Soviet Union, all of whom served as community leaders of Russian-speaking Jews in the United States, Canada, Germany and the Ukraine.

The organization works to strengthen the bond of Russian-speaking Jews in the Diaspora with Israel. The president is Alexander Levin, an American-Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist who is also head of the Jewish community of Kiev.

The World Forum of Russian-Speaking Jews (WFRJ) unveiled on Sunday a model of the new memorial site to be built at Babi Yar in Ukraine, where an estimated 50,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust

WFRJ Alexander Levin, who also heads the Jewish community in Kiev, told the Governing Board of the Jewish Agency in Kiev that the new memorial site will allow visitors from around the world to experience an emotional connection to the horrific slaughter that occurred at Babi Yar over 70 years ago.

He also sternly warned of the current anti-Semitism plaguing the region and called on European leaders to act more firmly to eradicate all manifestations of anti-Semitism in their country. The site will display historic material, including remains of clothes and belongings of the murdered, documents from the Nazi archives, a 3D film, and interviews with survivors. The site will include a Jewish center and synagogue that will symbolize the revival of Jewish life in the place where Nazis once planned to exterminate every remnant of Judaism.

Construction of the site will begin in the next few months and is expected to take around two-and-a-half years to complete. Funding will come mostly from Levin and Vadim Rabinovich, a Jewish philanthropist from Ukraine, and the United Israel Appeal is also expected to raise money.

Babi Yar is a ravine in the northwest sector of the Ukrainian capital Kiev and the location where Nazis murdered around 100,000 people in total, more than half of them Jews, from September 29, 1941 onward. Nearly 34,000 Jews were slaughtered between the two-day span of September 29-30, which is defined as the most gruesome Holocaust extermination carried out in such a short period of time. Over the next year, 15,000 additional Jews were murdered there.

Hundreds of Jewish and Zionist leaders from across the globe are meeting at the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency in Kiev, Ukraine, the first time they have met outside of Israel.

Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Natan Sharansky said at the opening plenary Sunday that since the fall of the Iron Curtain, more than a million Jews from the former Soviet Union have made Aliyah with the assistance of world Jewry, whom he praised for their contribution to the immigration of Soviet Jewry.

Minister for Immigrant Absorption, Sofa Landover noted the important contribution that immigrants from the former Soviet Union, including doctors, artists, scientists and musicians had made to strengthen the State of Israel.

The Chief Rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, said at the opening plenary that the conference was one of the most important events in the 25 year history of the revitalized Jewish community in Kiev.