Babi Yar () or Babyn Yar () is a ravine in the Ukraine capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first and best documented of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, in which some 33,771 Jews were murdered. Other victims of massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, communists and Romani people.[ It is estimated that a total of between 100,000 and 150,000 people were murdered at Babi Yar during the German occupation.][
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The decision to murder all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS- Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. Sonderkommando 4a as the sub-unit of Einsatzgruppe C, along with the aid of the SD and Order Police battalions with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police backed by the Wehrmacht, carried out the orders.
The massacre was the largest mass-murder by the Nazi regime during the campaign against the Soviet Union,
Historical background
The Babi Yar ( Babyn Yar) ravine was first mentioned in historical accounts in 1401, in connection to the sale of it by baba (an old woman) who was also the cantiniere in the Dominican Order Monastery.[Anatoliy Kudrytsky, editor-in-chief, "Vulytsi Kyeva" (The Streets of Kyiv), Ukrainska Entsyklopediya, ] The word yar is Turkic language in origin and means "gully" or "ravine". Over several centuries, the site was used for various purposes, including military camps and at least two cemeteries, including an Orthodox Christian cemetery and a Jewish cemetery. The latter was officially closed in 1937.
Massacres of September 1941
Axis forces, mainly German, occupied Kyiv on 19 September 1941. Between 20 and 28 September, explosives planted by the NKVD (the NKVD) caused extensive damage in the city, and on 24 September an explosion rocked Rear Headquarters Army Group South.[
] Also present were SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, commander of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, and his superior, SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Otto Rasch, commander of Einsatzgruppen]] C. The mass murder was to be carried out by units under the command of Rasch and Blobel, who were ultimately responsible for many atrocities in Soviet Ukraine during the summer and autumn of 1941.
The implementation of the order was entrusted to Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C commanded by Blobel, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln.[ The Holocaust Chronicle. p. 270] This unit consisted of Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo), the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion, and a platoon of the 9th Police Battalion. Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C and Police Battalion 45, commanded by Major Besser, conducted the massacre, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion. Contrary to the "myth of the clean Wehrmacht", the Sixth Army under the command of Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau worked together with the SS and SD to plan and execute the mass-murder of the Jews of Kyiv.
On 26 September 1941, the following order was posted:
On 29 and 30 September 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered approximately 33,771 Jews civilians at Babi Yar.[
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The commander of the Einsatzkommando reported two days later:
According to the testimony of a truck driver named Hofer, victims were ordered to undress and were beaten if they resisted:
The crowd was large enough that most of the victims could not have known what was happening until it was too late; by the time they heard the machine gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. A truck driver described the scene.
In the evening, the Germans undermined the wall of the ravine and buried the people under the thick layers of earth.[ Operational Situation Report No. 101 (einsatzgruppenarchives.com)] The money, valuables, underwear, and clothing of the murdered were turned over to the local Volksdeutsche and to the Nazi administration of the city.[Nuremberg Military Tribunal, Einsatzgruppen trial, Judgment, at p. 430.] Wounded victims were buried alive in the ravine along with the rest of the bodies.
Further massacres
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 residents of Kyiv of all ethnic groups,[Юрій Шаповал (27 February 2009), Літакцент, 2007-2009.][Yury Shapoval, "The Defection of Anatoly Kuznetsov", День, 18 January 2005.][Shmuel Spector, "Babi Yar," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Israel Gutman, editor in chief, Yad Vashem, Sifriat Hapoalim, New York: Macmillan, 1990. 4 volumes. . An excerpt of the article is available at Ada Holtzman, " Babi Yar: Killing Ravine of Kiev Jewry – WWII ", We Remember! Shalom!.] The Syrets concentration camp was also built in the area, which was notorious for its cruelty
Mass executions at Babi Yar continued until the Nazis evacuated the city of Kyiv. On 10 January 1942 about 100 captured Soviet sailors were executed there after being forced to disinter and cremate the bodies of previous victims. In addition, Babi Yar became a place of execution of residents of five Gypsy camps. Patients of the Ivan Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital were gassed and then dumped into the ravine. Thousands of other Ukrainians were murdered at Babi Yar.[ Babi Yar (Page 2) by Jennifer Rosenberg (about.com)] Ukrainian poet and activist Olena Teliha and her husband, and renowned bandurist Mykhailo Teliha, were murdered there on 21 February 1942.[Ludmyla Yurchenko, " Life is not to be sold for a few pieces of silver: The life of Olena Teliha ", Ukrainian Youth Association.] Also murdered in 1941 were Ukrainian activist writer Ivan Rohach, his sister, and his staff.
Upon the Soviet liberation of Kyiv in 1943, Soviet officials led Western journalists to the site of the massacres and allowed them to interview survivors. Among the journalists were Bill Lawrence of The New York Times and Bill Downs of CBS News. Downs described in a report to Newsweek what he had been told by one of the survivors, Efim Vilkis:
Number of people who were murdered
Estimates of the total number of people who were murdered at Babi Yar during the Nazi occupation vary. At the Nuremberg trials in 1946, Soviet prosecutor Lev Smirnov claimed that approximately 100,000 corpses were lying in Babi Yar; he made this estimate using documents which were published by the Extraordinary State Commission which the Soviets set up in order to investigate Nazi crimes after the liberation of Kyiv in 1943.[Materials of the Nuremberg Trial in Russian: Нюрнбергский процесс, т. III. M., 1958. с. 220–221.][ ][ Нюрнбергский Процесс. Документ СССР-9. ]
In a recently published letter to the Israeli journalist, writer, and translator Shlomo Even-Shoshan which was dated 17 May 1965, Anatoly Kuznetsov commented on the Babi Yar :
Survivors
One of the most often-cited parts of Anatoly Kuznetsov's documentary novel is the testimony of Dina Pronicheva, an actress of the Kyiv Puppet Theatre, and a survivor.[" A Survivor of the Babi Yar Massacre ," Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (PBS). Gilbert (1985): 204–205.] At least 29 survivors are known.
In 2006, Yad Vashem and other Jewish organisations started a project to identify and name the Babi Yar victims. However, so far, only 10% have been identified. Yad Vashem has recorded the names of around 3,000 Jews murdered at Babi Yar, as well as those of some 7,000 Jews from Kyiv who were murdered during the Holocaust.
Concealment of the crimes
Before the Nazis retreated from Kyiv ahead of the Soviet offensive of 1944, they were ordered by Wilhelm Koppe to conceal their atrocities in the East. Paul Blobel, who had been in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the "special action" Sonderaktion 1005 to eliminate its traces. The Aktion was carried out earlier in all extermination camps. The bodies were exhumed, burned and the ashes were scattered over farmland in the vicinity.[ Aktion 1005. Yad Vashem. Shoa Resource Centre. Retrieved 25 April 2013.] Several hundred prisoners of war from the Syrets concentration camp were forced to exhume the bodies for cremation in funeral pyres built atop layers of stolen Jewish gravestones.
Trials
In the aftermath of the war, several SS commanders who had planned and supervised the massacre were arrested and put on trial. Paul Blobel, the overall commander of the SS unit responsible for the massacre, was sentenced to death by the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in the Einsatzgruppen Trial. He was hanged on 7 June 1951 at Landsberg Prison.
In January 1946, 15 former members of the German police (including Paul Scheer) were tried in Kyiv over their roles in the massacre and other atrocities. Twelve of them were sentenced to death (Fritz Beckenhof, Karl Burckhardt, Georg Heinisch, Wilhelm Hellerforth, Hans Isenmann, Emil Jogschat, Emil Knoll, Willi Meier, Paul von Scheer, Eckart Hans von Tschammer und Osten, Georg Truckenbrod, and Oskar Walliser). The other three received prison sentences. Those condemned to death were publicly hanged in the town square of Kyiv on 29 January 1946.[Documentary Babi Yar. Context 2021, director Sergey Loznitsa, .] Erich Koch, who had been Reichskommissar of Ukraine at the time, was tried and sentenced to death by a Polish court for his atrocities in occupied Poland. However, he was never tried for his crimes in occupied Ukraine. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he died in prison in 1986.
Two additional perpetrators were given prison sentences at the Nuremberg Trials.
Remembrance
After the war, specifically Jewish and Roma commemoration efforts encountered difficulty because of the Soviet Union's emphasis on secular remembrances honoring all nationalities of the Soviet Union, so memorials (including at Babi Yar) would generally refer to "peaceful victims of fascism." Memorials were not explicitly forbidden, but successive Soviet leaders preferred instead to emphasise the wide-ranging origins of those murdered at the site. This meant that both Jewish and Roma peoples were not specifically memorialised at the Babi Yar site until the Soviet Union collapsed.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, several memorials were erected on the site and elsewhere. The events also formed a part of literature. Babi Yar is located in Kyiv at the juncture of today's Kurenivka, Lukianivka and Syrets districts, between Kyrylivska, Melnykov, and Olena Teliha streets and St. Cyril's Monastery. After the Orange Revolution, President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine hosted a major commemoration of the 65th anniversary in 2006, attended by Presidents Moshe Katsav of Israel, Filip Vujanović of Montenegro, Stjepan Mesić of Croatia and Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau. Rabbi Lau pointed out that if the world had reacted to the massacre of Babi Yar, perhaps the Holocaust might never have happened. Implying that this impunity emboldened Hitler, Lau speculated:
In 2006, a message was also delivered on behalf of Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations,[ ] by his representative, Resident Coordinator Francis Martin O'Donnell, who added a Hebrew prayer Shalom,[ ] from the Mourners' Kaddish.
Mudslide
In the spring of 1961, Babi Yar was the site of a massive mudslide. An earthen dam in the ravine was used to hold loam pulp which had been pumped from the local brick factories without sufficient drainage over the course of ten years. The dam collapsed after it was hit by a heavy rainstorm, resulting in a mudslide that swept away the low-lying Kurenivka neighborhood and several other areas. The death toll was estimated to be between 1,500 and 2,000 people.
2022 Russian bombing
On 1 March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the site was struck by Russian forces while they were trying to destroy the nearby Kyiv TV Tower. The attack resulted in the death of at least five people.
See also
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Antisemitism in Ukraine
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Babi Yar in poetry
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Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center
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Consequences of Nazism
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Genocides in history
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History of the Jews in Ukraine
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The Holocaust in Ukraine
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The Kindly Ones
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List of massacres in Ukraine
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Mass graves in the Soviet Union
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Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs
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Operation Barbarossa
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Reichskommissariat Ukraine
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Symphony No. 1 In Memoriam to the Martyrs of Babi Yar by Dmitri Klebanov (1945)
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Symphony No. 13 by Dmitri Shostakovich, which includes a setting of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem
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Ukrainian collaborationism with the Axis powers
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Ukrainian cultural heritage during the 2022 Russian invasion
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Valley of Death (Bydgoszcz)
Explanatory notes
Citations
General and cited sources
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A. Anatoli (Anatoly Kuznetsov), trans. David Floyd (1970), , Jonathan Cape Ltd.
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"Babi Yar in the mirror of science, or the map of Bermuda Triangle", an article in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia ( The Mirror Weekly), July 2005, available online
Further reading
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Bibliography of the Soviet Union during World War II
External links
