Babi Yar

Babi Yar (Бабий Яр; Бабин Яр, Babyn Yar) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union.

The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor, Major-General Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. It was carried out by Sonderkommando 4a soldiers, along with the aid of the SD and SS Police Battalions backed by the local police. The massacre was the largest single mass killing for which the Nazi regime and its collaborators were responsible during its campaign against the Soviet Union and is considered to be "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust" to that particular date, surpassed only by the Aktion Erntefest of November 1943 with 42,000–43,000 victims, and the 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews in October 1941, committed by the Romanian troops.

Victims of other massacres at the site included thousands of Soviet POWs, communists, Gypsies (Romani people), Ukrainian nationalists and civilian hostages. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 lives were taken at Babi Yar during the German occupation.

Historical background
The Babi Yar (Babyn 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.

Massacres of 29–30 September 1941


Axis forces, mainly German, occupied Kiev on 19 September 1941. On September 26 Maj. Gen. Kurt Eberhard, the military governor, and SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the SS and Police Leader at Rear Headquarters Army Group South, made the decision to exterminate the Jews of Kiev, claiming that it was in retaliation for guerrilla attacks against German troops. Einsatzgruppe C carried out the Babi Yar massacre and a number of other mass atrocities in Ukraine during the summer and autumn of 1941. Its commander SS-Brigadefuhrer Dr. Otto Rasch and the officer commanding Sonderkommando 4a, SS-Standartenfuhrer Paul Blobel were at the September 26 meeting as well. An order was then posted in the town: "All Yids of the city of Kiev and its vicinity must appear on Monday, September 29, by 08:00 a.m. at the corner of Mel'nikova and Doktorivska streets (near cemetery). Must take with them documents, money and valuables, also warm clothing, linen etc.

Those of Yids who won't follow this order and will be found in other place, will be shot. Those of civilians who enter the dwellings left by Yids and plunder stuff, will be shot."

- Order posted in Kiev in Russian, on or around September 26, 1941.

On 29 and 30 September 1941, a special team of German SS troops supported by other German units and local collaborators murdered 33,771 Jewish civilians after taking them to the ravine.

The implementation of the order was entrusted to Sonderkommando 4a, commanded by Blobel, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln. This unit consisted of SD and Sipo, the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion, and a platoon of the 9th Police Battalion. Police Battalion 45, commanded by Major Besser, conducted the massacre, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion.

The commander of the Einsatzkommando reported two days later: "The difficulties resulting from such a large scale action – in particular concerning the seizure – were overcome in Kiev by requesting the Jewish population through wall posters to move. Although only a participation of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Jews had been expected at first, more than 30,000 Jews arrived who, until the very moment of their execution, still believed in their resettlement, thanks to an extremely clever organization."

According to the testimony of a truck driver named Hofer, victims were ordered to undress and were beaten if they resisted: "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 had to give up 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 [sic] to keep them moving."

- Michael Berenbaum: "Statement of Truck-Driver Hofer describing the murder of Jews at Babi Yar"

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 truck driver described the scene. "Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep … When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot … The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun … I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him."



In the evening, the Germans undermined the wall of the ravine and buried the people under the thick layers of earth. According to the Einsatzgruppe's 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. The money, valuables, underwear, and clothing of the murdered victims were turned over to the local ethnic Germans and to the Nazi administration of the city.

Survivors
One of the most often-cited parts of Anatoly Kuznetsov's documentary novel Babi Yar is the testimony of Dina Pronicheva, an actress of the Kiev Puppet Theatre, and a survivor. She was one of those ordered to march to the ravine, to be forced to undress and then be 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 had covered the mass grave with earth, she eventually managed to climb through the soil and escape. Since it was dark, she had to avoid the flashlights of the Nazis finishing off the remaining victims still alive, wounded and gasping in the grave. She was one of the very few survivors of the massacre and later related her horrifying story to Kuznetsov. At least 29 survivors are known.

In 2006, Yad Vashem and other Jewish organizations started a project to identify and name the Babi Yar victims, but so far only 10% have been identified. Yad Vashem has recorded the names of around 3,000 Jews killed at Babi Yar, as well as those of some 7,000 Jews from Kiev who were killed during the Holocaust.

Further executions
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 Kiev of all ethnic groups,    mostly civilians, were murdered by the Nazis there during World War II. A concentration camp was also built in the area.

Mass executions at Babi Yar continued up until the German forces departed from Kiev. On January 10, 1942 about 100 sailors from a military flotilla were executed there. In addition, Babi Yar became a place of execution of residents of five Gypsy camps. According to various estimates, during 1941–1943 between 70,000–200,000 Romani people were 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 Ukrainians were killed at Babi Yar. Among those murdered were 621 members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Ukrainian poet and activist Olena Teliha and her husband, renowned bandurist Mykhailo Teliha, were murdered there on February 21, 1942.

Upon the Soviet liberation of Kiev in 1943, Russian officials led Western journalists to the site of the massacres and allowed them to interview survivors. Among them were Bill Lawrence of The New York Times and Bill Downs of CBS. Downs described in a report to Newsweek what he had been told by one of the survivors, Efim Vilkis: "However, even more incredible was the actions taken by the Nazis between August 19 and September 28 last. Vilkis said that in the middle of August the SS mobilized a party of 100 Russian war prisoners, who were taken to the ravines.On Aug. 19 these men were ordered to disinter all the bodies in the ravine. The Germans meanwhile took a party to a nearby Jewish cemetery whence marble headstones were brought to Babii Yar [sic] to form the foundation of a huge funeral pyre. Atop the stones were piled a layer of wood and then a layer of bodies, and so on until the pyre was as high as a two-story house. Vilkis said that approximately 1,500 bodies were burned in each operation of the furnace and each funeral pyre took two nights and one day to burn completely. The cremation went on for 40 days, and then the prisoners, who by this time included 341 men, were ordered to build another furnace. Since this was the last furnace and there were no more bodies, the prisoners decided it was for them. They made a break but only a dozen out of more than 200 survived the bullets of the Nazi Tommy guns."

Numbers murdered
Estimates of the total number killed at Babi Yar during the Nazi occupation vary. In 1946, Soviet prosecutor L. N. Smirnov at the Nuremberg Trials claimed there were approximately 100,000 corpses lying in Babi Yar, using materials of the Extraordinary State Commission set out by the Soviets to investigate Nazi crimes after the liberation of Kiev in 1943. According to testimonies of workers forced to burn the bodies, the numbers range from 70,000 to 120,000.

In a recently published letter to Israeli journalist, writer, and translator Shlomo Even-Shoshan dated May 17, 1965, Anatoly Kuznetsov commented on the Babi Yar atrocity: "In the two years that followed, Russians, Ukrainians, Gypsies, and people of all nationalities were murdered 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."

For his war crimes Paul Blobel was sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen Trial. He was hanged in June 1951 at the Landsberg Prison.

Syrets concentration camp
In the course of the German occupation, the Syrets concentration camp was set up in Babi Yar. Interned communists, Soviet POWs, and captured Soviet partisans were murdered there among others. On February 18, 1943, three Dynamo Kyiv football players (Trusevich, Klimenko, and Putistin) who took part in the Match of Death with the German Luftwaffe team were also murdered in the camp.

Concealment of the crimes
Before the Nazis retreated from Kiev ahead of the Soviet offensive of 1944, they were ordered by Koppe to conceal their atrocities in the East. Paul Blobel, who was in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the Sonderaktion 1005 in eliminating its traces. The Aktion was carried out earlier in all death camps. The bodies were exhumed, burned and the ashes scattered over farmland in the vicinity.

Remembrance


After the war, specifically Jewish commemoration efforts encountered serious difficulty because of the Soviet Union's policies. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of memorials have been erected on the site and elsewhere. The events also formed a part of literature. Babi Yar is located in Kiev at the juncture of today's Kurenivka, Lukianivka and Syrets neighborhoods, between Frunze, 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 Vujanovic 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 Hitler was emboldened by this impunity, Lau speculated:

"Maybe, say, this Babi Yar was also a test for Hitler. If on September 29 and September 30, 1941 Babi Yar may happen and the world did not react seriously, dramatically, abnormally, maybe this was a good test for him. So a few weeks later in January 1942, near Berlin in Wannsee, a convention can be held with a decision, a final solution to the Jewish problem... Maybe if the very action had been a serious one, a dramatic one, in September 1941 here in Ukraine, the Wannsee Conference would have come to a different end, maybe."

In 2006, a message was also delivered on behalf of Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, by his representative, Francis Martin O'Donnell, who added a Hebrew prayer O'seh Shalom, from the Mourners' Kaddish.

In fiction

 * Parts of George H. W. Bush's speech in Babi Yar in 1991 are quoted in Aleksandar Hemon's novel Nowhere Man.
 * The Babi Yar executions are described in detail in Jonathan Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes (in English, The Kindly Ones), whose main character, Dr. Aue, is one of the Nazi officers in charge.
 * The Remnant – Jewish Resistance in WWII by Othniel J. Seiden (c 2010, ISBN 0-9801941-4-8; Books to Believe In) also tells of the horrors of Babi Yar, along with the stories of the Forest People of the Ukraine, who made up much of the Jewish Resistance to the Nazis.
 * The Survivor of Babi Yar by Othniel J. Seiden (c 1980, ISBN 937050-02-4) is an account of the title character as he escapes and forms a Jewish resistance group of some size and significance.
 * In Chapter 5 of his novel The White Hotel, D.M. Thomas vividly describes the whole episode and the execution of his main character, Lisa, at Babi Yar. He describes Dina Pronicheva as "the only witness, the sole authority for what Lisa saw and felt".  Lisa's death is ambiguously recounted, and in Chapter 6, Lisa arrives at what seems to be a reception camp in Palestine, but which is in fact a post-death extension of her  psychological dream life.
 * Holocaust - 1978 U.S. TV miniseries, depicted the massacre at Babi Yar.
 * The novel HHhH by Laurent Binet (N. American publication in 2012, ISBN 978-0-374-16991-6) won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2010. Binet outlines the events at Babi Yar on September 29–30, 1941 in Chapter 111.

Mudslide
Babi Yar was also the site of a large mudslide in the spring of 1961. An earthen dam in the ravine had held loam pulp that had been pumped from the local brick factories for ten years without sufficient drainage. The dam collapsed after heavy rain, inundating the lower-lying Kurenivka neighborhood. The death toll was estimated to be between 500 and 2,000 people.