Page 26 - Jewish News_Sept2021

26A September 2021 JEWISH INTEREST

Babi Yar: the fatal ravine

By Paul R. Bartrop, PhD
abi Yar, also spelled Babiy Yar posedly detonated by Soviet military was repeated. The hasty murder of so September 1941 was one of the larg-
or Baby Yar, is the name given engineers or the NKVD, destroyed many people within two days did not est mass killings at any single location
Bto a large ravine on the north- German field headquarters and much assure that all the victims had died, during World War II. The horrendous
ern edge of Kiev in Ukraine. Eighty of central Kiev. The Germans used this even though shots continued to be numbers killed were surpassed only
years ago this month, across the two incident as a convenient justification to fired into bodies. A few managed to by the massacre in October 1941 of
days of September murder Kiev’s remaining 60,000 Jews, survive, however, and though gravely 50,000 Jews at Odessa by Romanian
29-30, 1941, it was comprising women, children, the old wounded, they managed to crawl from (and some German) units, and by the
where SS and Ger- and the sick. under the corpses and seek a hiding two-day Aktion Erntefest (Operation
man police divisions After discussions between Blo- place. Harvest Festival) in early November
murdered a large bel, SS-Brigadefuhrer Otto Rasch and In the months following the mas- 1943, which claimed 42,000 - 43,000
segment of the Jew- Major General Kurt Eberhard, the Ger- sacre, German authorities stationed at Jewish victims.
ish population of man field commander in Kiev, Eber- Kiev sporadically reused the ravine as More than any other incident, the
Kiev. hard ordered Kiev’s Jews to gather with a killing site. They murdered sever- massacres at Babi Yar have come to
Dr. Paul Bartrop As captive Jews their possessions – including money, al thousand more Jews, as well as an symbolize a characteristic of the Ho-
from the city moved into the ravine, valuables and warm clothing – near untold number of non-Jews including locaust – mass shooting, or “the Holo-
Einsatzgruppen units from Sonder- the Jewish cemetery no later than 7:00 Roma, communist officials, Soviet caust by bullets.” Arlene Stolnitz
kommando 4a under SS-Standarten- a.m. on Monday, September 29. They prisoners of war and Soviet civilians. In 1959, novelist Viktor Nekrasov
führer Paul Blobel shot them in small were told they would be relocated, and It is estimated that over the entire pe- appealed in the pages of Literaturnaya
groups. According to reports back to that disobedience would be punished riod in which German forces occupied Gazeta for a memorial to be established
headquarters, 33,771 Jews were mas- by death. The assembled Jews were Kiev, some 100,000 people were mur- at Babi Yar. Poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko
sacred in this two-day period. This then marched to the ravine at Babi Yar. dered at Babi Yar. followed this up with a famous poem,
was one of the largest mass killings at There, following standard procedure In July 1943, after Soviet forces “Babi Yar,” in the same journal on
an individual location during World used by Einsatzgruppen since late June seized the military initiative, Germa- September 19, 1961. The poem was
War II. 1941, SS and police forced the Jews ny launched Aktion 1005 to dispose an open attack upon antisemitism and
Before the German Army invad- to strip, dispossessed them of their be- of evidence of their crimes in the So- drew attention to Jewish martyrdom.
ed Kiev on September 19, 1941, some longings, and shot them into the ravine viet Union. Blobel, who had been dis- Composer Dmitri Shostakovich
160,000 Jews, about 20% of the city’s in groups of 30 to 40 people. charged from his duties as commander then set Yevtushenko’s lines to music
population, lived in Kiev. Around The Jews, in their thousands, of Sonderkommando 4a in early 1942 in his 13 Symphony, performed for
th
100,000 of them fled before the assault were steered into barbed-wire areas at and transferred to Berlin, returned to the first time in December 1962. Yev-
on the city, and during the ensuing bat- the top of the ravine, which were se- Kiev, where he supervised works to tushenko was publicly denounced by
tle, Axis forces killed or captured more cured by Ukrainian allies. There they eliminate evidence of the murders at Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Pravda
than 600,000 Soviet soldiers, most of undressed, were beaten and escorted Babi Yar. Throughout August and Sep- on March 8, 1963, but the details of the
whom never returned alive. Kiev was in groups down the gorge. The ini- tember 1943, his men and enslaved massacre would not remain censored.
incorporated into Reichskommissariat tial groups were forced to lie on the concentration camp prisoners re- Details resurfaced in 1966 in a novel
Ukraine, controlled by fanatical East ground, face down, and were killed opened the mass grave, crushed bones focusing on Babi Yar written by Anato-
Prussian Nazi district leader Erich by German machine guns. The bul- and burned the remains of the dead. ly Kuznetsov.
Koch. let-riddled bodies were covered thinly When the concealment work was done, After the breakup of the Soviet
Immediately following the Ger- with earth, the next group was ordered almost all the prisoners were killed. Union, the Ukrainian government ac-
man takeover, two big explosions, sup- to lie on top of them, and the process However, on September 29, 1943 – knowledged the specifically Jewish
two years to the day of the massacre nature of the site and an appropriate
– some 25 managed to escape under rededication was held.
cover of darkness. Fifteen survived to Paul R. Bartrop is Professor Emeritus
Since 2017, tell what they had seen. Other evidence of History and the former Director of
the Center for Holocaust and Geno-
of the massacres remained, discovered

5,874 by Soviet forces after the liberation of cide Research at Florida Gulf Coast
NEVER FORGET
Kiev in November 1943.
Holocaust, Genocide The Babi Yar Massacre of late University.
and Tolerance Education area students
have heard testimony
h
e K
n t
B
e i
o
w
!
n

from Holocaust survivors
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Your story of survival moved
me and I will remember you
for the rest of my life.
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