77 years ago today (September 29, 1941) the Germans and their
collaborators murdered 33,771 men, women and children at Babi Yar (Бабин Яр in
Ukrainian) in Kyiv, Ukraine. The name Babi Yar refers to an old woman (Baba)
selling the ravine (Yar) to a Monastery in 1401.
A notice (in German, Ukrainian and Russian) was posted in the local newspapers telling all Jews in Kyiv to meet at a certain time and place – with all their documents and luggage - so they could be resettled following a series of explosions throughout the city (caused by undercover Soviet NKVD secret police.) The notice also said that any Jews left in Kyiv afterwards would be shot on sight.
The Germans expected around 6,000 people to show up, but instead over 33,700 came to the meeting point. The men, women and children were walked several miles to the Babi Yar ravine (then outside the city), made to undress and run naked through a column of Ukrainian para-military collaborators to an open pit where the Germans shot them – children under 3 and babies were simply thrown in alive to be buried by the other bodies.
Only 29 people are known to have survived the massacre (by being shot and wounded then falling into the pit and hiding under the thousands of dead bodies until they could climb out in the darkness.)
Babi Yar is the single largest massacre of the Holocaust. 33,771 men, women and children were murdered on September 29-30, 1941 with a total of 150,000 people (Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Soviet Prisoners of War, Catholic and Orthodox Priests, Partisans, etc.) murdered at the same spot until Kyiv was liberated in November 1943.
The picture is one I took at Babi Yar in Kyiv, Ukraine at the exact location of the ravine (now a city park.) This memorial is to all the children murdered at Babi Yar and was built after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 – before that the Soviets refused to allow mention that Jews were killed in this massacre or in any Holocaust crime.
A notice (in German, Ukrainian and Russian) was posted in the local newspapers telling all Jews in Kyiv to meet at a certain time and place – with all their documents and luggage - so they could be resettled following a series of explosions throughout the city (caused by undercover Soviet NKVD secret police.) The notice also said that any Jews left in Kyiv afterwards would be shot on sight.
The Germans expected around 6,000 people to show up, but instead over 33,700 came to the meeting point. The men, women and children were walked several miles to the Babi Yar ravine (then outside the city), made to undress and run naked through a column of Ukrainian para-military collaborators to an open pit where the Germans shot them – children under 3 and babies were simply thrown in alive to be buried by the other bodies.
Only 29 people are known to have survived the massacre (by being shot and wounded then falling into the pit and hiding under the thousands of dead bodies until they could climb out in the darkness.)
Babi Yar is the single largest massacre of the Holocaust. 33,771 men, women and children were murdered on September 29-30, 1941 with a total of 150,000 people (Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Soviet Prisoners of War, Catholic and Orthodox Priests, Partisans, etc.) murdered at the same spot until Kyiv was liberated in November 1943.
The picture is one I took at Babi Yar in Kyiv, Ukraine at the exact location of the ravine (now a city park.) This memorial is to all the children murdered at Babi Yar and was built after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 – before that the Soviets refused to allow mention that Jews were killed in this massacre or in any Holocaust crime.
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