Today marks 84 years since the beginning of the mass shootings at Babyn Yar — one of the largest Nazi crimes in Europe during World War II.
On September 29–30, 1941, German occupiers together with local collaborators gathered the Jewish population of Kyiv under the pretext of “evacuation.” People were ordered to bring documents, money, and warm clothing. Columns of men, women, children, and the elderly were marched to the Babyn Yar ravine, where they were stripped and shot in groups with machine guns. More than 33,000 Jews were killed in just two days.
In the following years, the ravine became a site of further mass executions: Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, underground fighters, psychiatric hospital patients, and others were murdered there. According to various estimates, the total number of victims ranges from 100,000 to 150,000 people.
Babyn Yar became a symbol of the Holocaust in Ukraine and one of the greatest tragedies of the war. It was here that the Nazis tested methods of mass extermination later used elsewhere. After the war, Soviet authorities long suppressed the truth about the massacre, and full recognition of the tragedy came only decades later.
Today, memorial events are being held in Kyiv with the participation of government officials, the public, clergy, and foreign diplomats. Ukrainian society once again stresses the importance of preserving the memory of the victims of Babyn Yar as a warning for future generations.