Babi Yar Totally Explained

Everything about Babi Yar totally explained

Babi Yar (Babyn yar;, Babiy yar) is a ravine in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. In the course of two days, September 29—30, 1941, a special team of German Nazi SS supported by other German units and Ukrainian police murdered 33,771 Jewish civilians. The Babi Yar massacre is considered to be "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust".
In the months that followed, thousands more were seized and taken to Babi Yar where they were shot. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians, of whom a significant number were Jews, were executed by the Nazis there during World War II.
In today's Kiev, Babi Yar is located at the juncture of Kurenivka, Lukianivka and Syrets raions, between Frunze, Melnykov and Olena Teliha streets and St. Cyril's Monastery.

Historical background

The Babi Yar ravine was first mentioned in historical accounts in 1401, in connection with its sale by "baba" (an old woman), the cantiniere, to the Dominican Monastery. In the course of several centuries the site had been used for various purposes including military camps and at least two cemeteries, among them an Orthodox Christian cemetery and a Jewish Cemetery. The latter was officially closed in 1937.

Nazi occupation

After the 45-day battle for the city of Kiev, Nazi forces entered the city on September 19, 1941. The occupation of Kiev lasted until November 6, 1943.

The massacres of September 29-30, 1941

On September 28, leaflets in Russian, Ukrainian and German languages were posted in Kiev. The Russian announcement read:

(From the Russian translation) All Jews of the city of Kiev and its environs must appear on Monday, September 29, 1941, by 8:00 AM on the corner of Melnіkov and Dokterivsky streets (near the cemetery). You are to take your documents, money, valuables, warm clothes, linen etc. Whoever of the Jews doesn't fulfill this order and is found in another place, shall be shot. Any citizen who enters the apartments that have been left and takes ownership of items will be shot.

More than thirty thousand of Kievan Jews gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto trains for deportation. The commander of the Einsatzkommando reported two days later:

Because of 'our special talent of organisation', 'the Jews still believed to the very last moment before being executed that indeed all that was happening was that they were being resettled.

The crowd was large enough that most of the men, women, and children couldn't have known what was happening until it was too late: by the time they heard the gunfire, there was no chance to escape. According to the testimony of truck driver Hofer:

I watched what happened when the Jews - men, women, and children - arrived. The Ukrainians led them past a number of different places where one after the other they'd to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes and over-garments and also underwear. They also had to leave their valuables in a designated place. There was a special pile for each article of clothing. It all happened very quickly and anyone who hesitated was kicked or pushed by the Ukrainians to keep them moving.

All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. Anatoly Kuznetsov described the massacre:

There was no question of being able to dodge or get away. Brutal blows, immediately drawing blood, descended on their heads, backs and shoulders from left and right. The soldiers kept shouting: "Schnell, schnell!" as if they were watching a circus act; they even found ways of delivering harder blows in the more vulnerable places, the ribs, the stomach and the groin.

Victims were then ordered to undress, beaten if they resisted, and then shot at the edge of the Babi Yar gorge. According to the Einsatzgruppen Operational Situation Report, 33,771 Jews from Kiev and its suburbs were systematically shot dead by machine-gun fire at Babi Yar on September 29 and September 30, 1941.
In the evening, the Germans undermined the wall of the ravine and buried the people under the thick layers of earth. A unit of Einsatzgruppe C, Police Battalion 45 commanded by Major Besser, carried out the massacre, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion. Units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln were used to round up and direct the Jews to the location.

Survivors

One of the most often-cited parts of Kuznetsov's documentary novel is the testimony of Dina Pronichev, an actress of Kiev Puppet Theater. She was one of those ordered to march to the ravine, forced to undress, and then shot. Jumping before being shot and falling on other bodies, she played dead in a pile of corpses. She held perfectly still while the Nazis continued to shoot the wounded or gasping victims. Although the SS have covered the mass grave with earth, she eventually managed to climb through the soil and escape. Since it was dark, she avoided the flashlights of the Nazis finishing off the remaining people alive, wounded, gasping, in the grave. She was one of the very few survivors of the massacre; she later related her horrifying story to Kuznetsov.

Further executions

Roma people were also rounded up and murdered at Babi Yar. Patients of the Ivan Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital were gassed and then dumped into the ravine. Thousands of other civilians were killed at Babi Yar.
Among those executed were 621 members of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Ukrainian poet and activist Olena Teliha and her husband renown bandurist Mykhailo Teliha were executed there on February 21 1942.

Number of executed

Estimates of the total number of dead at Babi Yar during the Nazi occupation vary. The Soviet estimation stated that there were approximately 100,000 corpses lying in Babi Yar.
According to testimonies of workers forced to burn the bodies, the numbers range from 70,000 to 120,000.

Syrets concentration camp

In the course of the occupation, the Syrets concentration camp was set up in Babi Yar. There, interned communists, Soviet POWs, and captured Soviet Partisans were executed. On February 18 1943 three Dynamo Kyiv football players, who took part in the Match of Death with the German Luftwaffe team were also executed in the camp. It is estimated that 25,000 people died in the camp.

Cover-up attempts and inmate revolt

Before the Nazis retreated from Kiev, they attempted to cover up their atrocities. Paul Blobel, who was in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the Sonderaktion 1005 eliminating its traces. For his war crimes he was sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen Trial and was hanged in June 1951.
For six weeks from August to September of 1943, more than 300 chained prisoners were forced to exhume and burn the corpses and scatter the ashes in the vicinity. During the exhumations, a group of prisoners secretly armed themselves with tools and scraps of metal they managed to find and conceal. They picked the locks with keys they found on victims' bodies. Martin Gilbert quotes historian Reuben Ainsztein:

... in those half-naked men who reeked of putrefying flesh, whose bodies were eaten by scabies and covered with a layer of mud and soot, and of whose physical strength so little remained, there survived a spirit that defied everything that the Nazis' New Order had done or could do to them. In the men whom the SS men saw only as walking corpses, there matured a determination that at least one of them must survive to tell the world about what happened in Babi Yar.

On the night of September 29, 1943, as the camp was being dismantled, an inmate revolt broke out. The prisoners overpowered the guards using their bare hands, hammers and screw drivers. Fifteen people managed to escape. Among them was Vladimir Davіdov, who later served as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials. Among other escapees were Fyodor Zavertanny, Jacob Kaper, Filip Vilkis, Leonid Kharash, I. Brodskiy, Leonid Kadomskiy, David Budnik, Fyodor Yershov, Jakov Steiuk, Semyon Berland, Vladimir Kotlyar.

Draft version	Published version
"The Hitlerist bandits committed mass murder of the Jewish population. They announced that on September 29 1941, all the Jews were required to arrive to the corner of Melnikov and Dokterev streets and bring their documents, money and valuables. The butchers marched them to Babi Yar, took away their belongings, then shot them."	"The Hitlerist bandits brought thousands of civilians to the corner of Melnikov and Dokterev streets. The butchers marched them to Babi Yar, took away their belongings, then shot them."

Star in Eclipse: Russian Jewry Revisited, Joseph Schechtman provided an account of the Babi Yar tragedy. In 1966, Anatoli Kuznetsov's was published in censored form in the Soviet monthly literary magazine Yunost. Kuznetsov began writing a memoir of his wartime life when he was 14. Over the years he continued working on it, adding documents and eyewitnesses testimonies. He managed to smuggle 35 mm photographic film containing the uncensored manuscript when he defected and the book was published in the West in 1970.
Several attempts were made to erect a memorial at Babi Yar to commemorate the fate of the Jewish victims. All аттемптс were overruled. An official memorial то Soviet citizens shot at Babi Yar was erected in 1976.
In 1985, a documentary film Babiy Yar: Lessons of History

by Vitaly Korotich was made to mark the tragedy.
   After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the Ukrainian government allowed a separate memorial specifically identifying the Jewish victims.
   The massacre of Jews at Babi Yar has inspired a number of creative ventures. A poem was written by the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko; this in turn was set to music by Dmitri Shostakovich in his Symphony No. 13. An oratorio was composed by the Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych to the text of Dmytro Pavlychko (2006). A number of films and television productions have also marked the tragic events at Babi Yar, and D. M. Thomas's novel The White Hotel uses the massacre's anonymity and violence as a counterpoint to the intimate and complex nature of the human psyche.
   In a recently published letter to the Israeli journalist, writer, and translator Shlomo Even-Shoshan dated May 17, 1965, Anatoli Kuznetsov commented on the Babi Yar tragedy:

"In the two years that followed, Russians, Ukrainians, Gypsies, and people of all nationalities were executed in Babyn Yar. The belief that Babyn Yar is an exclusively Jewish grave is wrong. [...] It is an international grave. Nobody will ever determine how many and what nationalities are buried there, because 90% of the corpses were burned, their ashes scattered in ravines and fields."

List of monuments built near the Babi Yar

Since 1976, a number of monuments have been built to commemorate the numerous events associated with Babi Yar tragedy, including:

"Monument to Soviet citizens and POWs shot by Germans at Babi Yar" (opened in July 1976)
Menorah-shaped monument to the Jews massacred at Babi Yar (opened on Sept. 29, 1991, 50 years after the first mass killing of the Jews at Babi Yar)
Wooden cross in memory of the 621 Ukrainian nationalists (including Olena Teliha and her husband) executed by the Germans in 1942 (installed in 1992)
Oak Cross marking the place where two Ukrainian Orthodox Christian priests were shot on Nov.6, 1941, for anti-German agitation (installed in 2000)
Monument to children killed at Babi Yar (opened in 2001 near the Dorohozhychi subway station)
Magen David shaped stone marking the site for a planned Jewish community center (installed in 2001; however, construction of the center was suspended because of disputes over its specific location and scope of activities)
Monument to Ostarbeiters and concentration camp prisoners (installed in 2005 at the corner of Dorohozhytska and Oranzheriyna St., close to the 1976 monument)
Monument to victims of the 1961 Kurenivka mudslide in Kiev (installed in 2006, 45 years after the disaster killed hundreds of local residents and workers)
Three tombs over a steep ravine edge with black metal crosses, installed by an unknown volunteer. One cross has an inscription: "People were killed in 1941 at this place, too. May God rest their souls." (This list isn't comprehensive).

Also, there was a proposal to mark the thousands of Roma (Gypsies) killed at Babi Yar by building a monument designed as a Gypsy wagon. However, this plan hasn't yet gathered a sufficient financial and administrative support.
Other memorials

United States
The President of the Babi Yar Park Foundation Alan G. Gass stated:

We built a memorial park to the Babi Yar massacre in Denver, Colorado. It was dedicated in 1982, with an inscribed black granite entrance gateway, a "People Place" amphi-theatre, a "Forest that Remembers" with a spring flowing all year in the middle, and a high-walled, narrow black bridge over a ravine, all at three points of a Magen David carved out of the native prairie grasses. It is owned and maintained by the City & County of Denver. The park is used by the recently arrived immigrants from Russia and the former Soviet Union as a place of remembrance during the year and with a special ceremony on 29 September each year. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine issued a statement condemning the act of vandalism.

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