Babi Yar

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Babi Yar (Russian: Бабий яр, Babiy yar; Ukrainian: Бабин яр, Babyn yar) is a ravine near Kiev (in Ukraine) first noted in historical records during the early fifteenth century but which is remembered today as the site where more than 100,000 Soviet civilians (over 37,000 of whom were Jews) were executed by the Nazis and local collaborators during the Second World War.[1] The massacres at Babi Yar were among the worst of the Holocaust.

1 Historical Background
2 World War II
3 Remembrance
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Historical Background

The first mention of Babi Yar dates back to 1401 and in the course of several centuries the site had been used for different purposes including military camps and at least two cemeteries, among them a New Jewish Cemetery that had been closed by 1937.[2]

[edit] World War II

After the 45-day battle for the city of Kiev, Nazi forces finally entered the city on September 19, 1941. Several prominent buildings within the city had been rigged with explosives by the NKVD and a series of explosions between September 24-29 caused considerable casualties among German forces. The Nazi military governor, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln decided, after consulting with several other higher-ranking officers, that retribution was to be taken against the local population for the casualties suffered by the new occupiers. The first executions took place on September 27, 1941, when 700 patients from the local psychiatric hospital were removed from the facility and executed.^{[citation needed]} It was also eventually decided, in line with the policies of the Final Solution, that the Jewish population in particular should be made to suffer as well for the extensive campaign of sabotage; in light of the extensive scholarship since 1945 on the subject of the Holocaust, it is perhaps unnecessary to state here that th8is was of course used as a pretext for moving against the local Jews. (Later research conducted into the battle for Kiev and the events of Babi Yar have reaffirmed this conclusion as well.)

[edit] The Massacres of September 29-30, 1941

Image:Bigbabijar14.jpg

On September 28, notices around Kiev were posted reading,

"All Jews living in the city of Kiev and its vicinity are to report by 8 o'clock on the morning of Monday, September 29, 1941, to the corner of Melnikovsky and Dokhturov Streets (near the cemetery). They are to take with them documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes, underwear, etc. All who do not carry out this instruction will be shot. Anyone entering flats evacuated by Jews and stealing property will be shot."

The Jews of Kiev gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto the now all-too-well-known trains. The crowd was large enough that most of the men, women, and children 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. Kuznetsov described the massacre:

Image:Einsatz1.jpg

"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!" laughing happily, 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."

The Jews 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 No. 101, 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.

A unit of Einsatzgruppe C, Police Battalion 45 commanded by a Major Besser, carried out the massacre, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion and units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln.

[edit] Further Executions

Further executions took place on October 1, 2, 8 and 11, 1941. During this time 17,000 more Jews were executed. Mass executions in the ravine continued up until Germans withdrew from the city in 1943. mong others, about 621 members of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) had been executed, as well as the prominent Ukrainian poet Olena Teliha.

Estimates of the total number of dead at Babi Yar during the Nazi occupation vary widely. Some put the number as low as 70,000; others as high as 200,000. According to testimonies of Jewish workers forced to burn the bodies, the numbers range from 70,000 to 120,000.

Later at Babi Yar, the Syretsk Concentration Camp was set up, where interned communists, soviet POWs, and captured resistance fighters were executed as well. On February 18 1943 three Dynamo Kyiv players, who took part in the so-called Match of Death with German Luftwaffe team were executed in the camp. It is estimated that around 25,000 people died in the camp alone.

[edit] Cover-up attempts

Image:Babyn 01.jpg

Once the Nazis were forced to retreat from Kiev, attempts were made to cover up the atrocities committed at Babi Yar and the surrounding areas. From August to September of 1943, the Syretsk camp was partially destroyed and some of the corpses were exhumed and burned in open ovens; their ashes were scattered in the vicinity. During the night of September 29, 1943, as the camp was being dismantled, an inmate revolt broke out, and as a result 18 people managed to escape. However, once the Nazis were able to re-establish control over the camp, the remaining 311 inmates were promptly executed.

[edit] Remembrance

When the Red Army finally retook the city on November 6, 1943 what was left of Syretsk Concentration Camp was converted into a Russian internment camp for German POWs and operated until 1946. The camp was subsequently demolished and in the 1950s and 1960s urban development began in the area, which included an apartment complex and a park. The construction nearby of a hydroelectric dam also saw the ravine itself filled with water. (The dam collapsed after large amounts of rain in the sprint of 1961.)

After the War, the Soviet leadership vehemently opposed commemorating any of the massacres committed during the Holocuast as being motivated by ethnic hatred; instead, the Soviet government presented these events as crimes committed against the entire Soviet people. As such, several attempts to build a memorial at Babi Yar, in particular for the Jewish victims, were overruled. Eventually, an official memorial for the Soviet citizens shot at Babi Yar was finally erected in 1976; however, it was not be until after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that a memorial for the Jewish victims was placed at Babi Yar.

The massacre of Jews at Babi Yar has inspired a number of creative ventures. A poem by the same name was written by the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko; this in turn was enthusiastically set to music by Dmitri Shostakovich in his Symphony No. 13. A number of films and television productions have also commemorated the events at Babi Yar.

[edit] References

Kuznetsov (Anatoli A.), trans. David Floyd, (1970), Babi Yar, Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-671-45135-9
"Babi Yar in the mirror of science, or the map of Bermuda Triangle", an article in Zerkalo Nedeli (the Mirror Weekly), July 2005, available online in Russian and in Ukrainian
Encyclopedia of Kyiv