In late September 1941, tens of thousands of Jews from the city of Kyiv were rounded up by the Germans with the help of Ukrainian militia. They were taken to a place called Babyn Yar, meaning “old woman’s ravine” in Ukrainian. Here, they were forced to strip before being shot by members of Einsatzgruppe C, Sonderkommando 4a, a Nazi death squad. More than 33,000 Jews were murdered. Following the slaughter, a few older Jews managed to return to Kyiv where they sat for days and nights by the synagogue, traumatised, until they, too, were killed by a German guard.
The Babyn Yar massacre has come to represent what is known as the “Holocaust by bullets”. Around 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were murdered between 1941 and 1944, the majority by gunfire. But it was not only Jews who were slaughtered at Babyn Yar. By the time the Soviets reached Kyiv in late 1943, the Nazis had used the ravine for killing operations to which Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Ukrainian nationalists, and priests (among others) fell victim. All in all, some 100,000 people met their deaths at Babyn Yar.
Babyn Yar continued to bring death. In March 1961, a huge landslide known as the Kurenivka mudslide resulted in mud and water pouring onto the streets of Kyiv. Amongst the mud were human remains from Babyn Yar. The Soviet authorities had tried to bury Babyn Yar beneath a landfill. Then it was filled with liquid waste from nearby brick factories. The mudslide, according to official figures, caused 145 deaths, but the number could have been as high as 1,500 according to historian Oleksandr Anisimov. These were not to be the last deaths at the site: on March 1, a Russian missile targeted at a TV tower at Babyn Yar killed at least five people and reportedly caused damage to the memorial park now located there.
