BABI YAR TODAY: TOPOGRAPHY OF TERROR Even 80 years after the dramatic events in Kyiv, a number of issues are to be clarified. With this article, I initiate a series of materials on the Babi yar massacre. As a Ukrainian myself, the primary aim is to help the ‘Western readers’ to grasp this topic, including the Eastern front, occupation of Ukraine, the Holocaust. To eliminate the blind historical spots and distortion of facts, step by step, with the most appraised scholarly of the last decades. I have invested almost two months in reading and searching up to 30 books, recent findings, primary sources, including now available bulk of German documents, first-account testimonies, topographic maps: all to write this quite volumed 8000-word article with plenty of photos: both unique historical and my own ones in 2020. More than always, I would appreciate your feedback on this material, which indeed fuels me with enthusiasm to keep traveling, reading, and writing. https://war-documentary.info/babi-yar-today/
Ukraine's forgotten 'Holocaust by Bullets' Babi Yar (Ukrainian: Бабин Яр, Babyn Yar or Babin Yar; Russian: Бабий Яр, Babiy Yar) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first and best documented of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, killing approximately 33,771 Jews. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. Sonderkommando 4a troops, along with the aid of the SD and SS Police Battalions with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police backed by the Wehrmacht, carried out the orders.[1][2][3] The massacre was the largest mass killing under the auspices of the Nazi regime and its collaborators during its campaign against the Soviet Union[4] and has been called "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust" to that particular date,[5] and surpassed overall only by the later 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews in October 1941 (committed by German and Romanian troops) and by Aktion Erntefest of November 1943 in occupied Poland with 42,000–43,000 victims.[6][need quotation to verify] Victims of other massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, communists, Ukrainian nationalists and Roma.[7][8][9] It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 people were killed at Babi Yar during the German occupation.[10] Babi Yar - Wikipedia
Holocaust deniers are now trying to say that no mass shootings took place. Robert Faurisson ( now dead and in historical value no loss) and Carlo Mattongo are the purveyors of this drivel. Heydrich documented his killing squads' activities so well and reported on them so prodigiously. David Stahel in his book on the battle for Kiev stated that the killing of Kiev's jews was in revenge for the retreating Russians having booby-trapped major buildings which they rightly predicted that the Germans would take over when they occupied the city. The Germans of course blamed the Jews....... so the order for them to assemble or to be shot, in any case, mass murder had been planned.
The Babi Yar ravine in Kiev is the site of some of the worst massacres of World War II. The first and largest was carried out in September 1941 over a two-day period during which German forces executed 33,771 Jews. Over 100,000 more Jews, Romanis, Ukrainians, and Soviet prisoners of war were murdered throughout the next two years until the Soviets retook Kiev on November 6, 1943. Bill Downs wrote an article for Newsweek in 1943 recounting the second visit to the site taken by a group of Moscow-based war correspondents. New York Times correspondent Bill Lawrence was in the same press party and gave his own account. Both accounts are featured in the link - 1943. Blood at Babi Yar: Kyiv's Atrocity Story
BBC News - Babyn Yar: Anger as Kyiv's Holocaust memorial is damaged Babyn Yar: Anger as Kyiv's Holocaust memorial is damaged
