BABI YAR TODAY: TOPOGRAPHY OF TERROR
BABI YAR TODAY: TOPOGRAPHY OF TERROR

GERMANS ENTER KYIV: SEPTEMBER 1941

On September 18, 1941, the sixth week of the attacks, German ‘V. Fliegerkorps’ under Robert Ritter von Greim, a legend-like flying ace of the Great War, renewed an air offensive against Kyiv, exposing the city to mass bombardment actions. The nosedives of the German Stukas sparked panic around and inside the Ukrainian capital. In less than two weeks the very ‘V. Fliegerkorps’ would operate 1422 sorties of bombing runs against the besieged Soviet armies to the East and the city of Kyiv. The capital had experienced a siege since the second week of July. In the aftermath of the last days of particularly severe attacks both from the air and from the ground, the early hours of September 19, 1941, the 70th day of the war between the Third Reich and the USSR, witnessed detached squadrons of four Germans divisions (71 and 75 infantry and 99 light: all within ‘XXIX. Armeekorps’ and the 296th Infantry Division as a part of the XVII Army Corps) on their way to cross the city limits of Kyiv, had been left by the Red army.

The pioneering photos of the German soldiers next to Swastika over the city included noon shadows. The victory was not a walk in the park as the 71 infantry division solely lost 962 killed in action and 3150 wounded as the result of taking Kyiv. FRANZ HALDER, the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH), has included a passage in his wartime diary, that a German flag flies over the buildings of Kyiv, all bridges destroyed and three German divisions under command of trusted officers of High Command (their former occupations) successfully broke into the city. 

GERMANS ENTER KYIV 1941
German road signs in occupied Ukraine

The population of the largest Ukrainian city was variously estimated from 846,000 (count in 1939) to 930,000 (regarding emigration since 1939) before the outbreak of war with Germany (before 22 June 1941). By the early hours of September 19, the German soldiers had a chance to count (the first and only count of the occupational years would be conducted in Spring 1942) as many as 400,000 people within a besieged capital. In the span of three war months, at least 200,000 men (citizens of Kyiv) were called to arms of the Red Army and a mere 325,000 citizens were evacuated or left the city since June 22. As for the proportion of the Jewish population in Kyiv in June and September 19, it had significantly cut as well. The exact proportion of Jews in pre-war Kyiv is either way debatable. The population census in 1939 figured 223 236 Jews among 846 000 the total Kyiv population or 26.5%, with around half of the population being ethnic Ukrainians and another quarter Russians. 

Along with such precise figures, the annihilation of Poland by Stalin and Hitler in 1939 led to a mass migration of people to the Western part of the now-expanded Soviet Union. The outbreak of war on June 22 and the following siege of Kyiv objectified the mass exodus of the civil population, the Jews in particular. The extraction of strategic enterprises to the East with the working force demanded another 25-30 thousand of the civil Jewish population. Apart from evacuation, Jewish men in Kyiv were also called to arms. Summing up a wide range of factors and figures, the most recognized modern scholars estimate 40 000 – 50 000 Jewish population among 400 000 in total on September 19, 1941. 

The battle for Kyiv 1941
Ukrainian civilians digging trenches around Kyiv
The German occupation of Kyiv September 1941
Citizens of Kyiv on Khreshchatyk main street in 1941

Later on the same day September 19, when German soldiers of three infantry divisions posterized in front of the cameras in conquered Kyiv, a vanguard (50 men) of Sonderkommando 4a, a unit within Einsatzgruppe С, entered the city as well. The same day, the cadre strength of Sonderkommando 4a, apart from these 50 men, carried out a ‘mass action’, in fact, a euphemism for mass murder, in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr: 3145 people were violently executed by September 19 end. This key staff would arrive in Kyiv as early as 25 September 1941 next to the command unit of Einsatzgruppe C. Sonderkommando 4a had previously murdered the Jewish children of Bila Tserkva. Those September days also witnessed the arrival of other punitive units totaling 1,500 men.    

  1. 45th reserve police battalion and 303rd police battalion: both as part of ‘Polizei-Regiment Süd’ (Police Regiment South), a formation of the Germans Order Police. The regiment operated as a German unit under Friedrich Jeckeln, a Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied Soviet Union. The 45th Reserve Battalion was formed in Hamburg of local policemen under the command of Martin Besser, a police major, and SS-Sturmbannführer, and later included a great proportion of the Sudeten Germans. During the summer months of 1941, the battalion took part in mass executions throughout Ukraine, for example massacring the entire Jewish population of the town of Shepetovka, Slavuta (522 victims), and Sudylkov (471 dead). In September the 4th battalion assisted in murdering 16 000 Jews in Berdichev. Both first commanders Martin Besser and Rene Rosenbauer would later state that they received orders from Friedrich Jeckeln, who himself claimed to be instructed by Heinrich Himmler personally. The 303rd battalion under the command of another officer of the same rank (SS-Sturmbannführer and police major) Heinrich Hannibal, had been formed in Bremen. The command staff of the Regiment accompanied the soldiers of two battalions. 
  2. Units of 454th security division (454. Sicherungs-Division) of Wehrmacht and country constabulary. 
  3. The late September days witnessed the arrival of the units of ‘The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police’, 300 men who had been mainly recruited from the Soviet POWs. 
The devastated city center of Kyiv 1941
The devastated city center of Kyiv on the site of the modern Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square

In factual contrast to the conventional historical misinterpretation, that Wehrmacht played no part in repressive measures against the civil population on the occupied territories of the USSR, the very first ‘measures’ in Kyiv were initiated by the army, not by punitive detachments under the SS. During this initial period in the occupation of Kyiv, five army divisions: 71, 75, 95, 99, and 299 (all as part of ‘XXIX. Armeekorps’) were accommodated in the city, each in a separate district. The very first suppressive measures against the civil population wasted little time. On September 20, less than a full day after the fall of Kyiv, the army command and the newly formed commandant office issued some orders. The regulations meant obligatory fulfillment: each of the orders included a passage on execution on the spot for those, who violated the rules.

The Germans assigned a blacking-out and a curfew after 8 p.m. (initially after 22). The population was now under ‘48 hours’ obligation to register all supplies in the possession and to hand in a ‘surplus of goods’, as well as to ‘restore’ goods that had been taken by people from stores and enterprises. All pieces of firearms, as well as radio sets, were subjected to immediate expropriation. The civil population of Kyiv was deprived of any attempt (under penalty of death) to hide or in any way assist the Soviet soldiers and ‘partisans’. The adult population was also prescribed to present themselves to the last place of employment. As early as 24 September 1941 the so-called ‘Economic Inspectorate South’ estimated that existing stocks of food in Kyiv would be enough for the city population for only eight to fourteen days. Six days later, on September 30, its ‘experts’ banned the move of the supplies into the Ukrainian capital. The newly established checkpoints around Kyiv were set up to control the flood of food into the city, mainly by banning peasants from performing trade in Kyiv. Such a blockade for supplies was a part of the notorious ‘Hunger Plan’ originating in November 1940, as well as Hitler’s vision of eradicating large Soviet cities from existence. 

German occupation of Ukraine and Kyiv in 1941
More than 2 million Ukrainians were sent to the Third Reich as laborers during the occupation. Here citizens of Kyiv waiting for the departure at the city train station

In the afternoon hours of September 24, 1941, exactly five days after hoisting of the Germans’ banners over Kyiv, several buildings along Khreshchatyk, the main street of the Ukrainian capital, were exposed to shattering explosions. The explosive compound had been planted weeks before the capitulation of Kyiv by the special squad of Soviet NKVD and was now powered up intentionally. The explosions targeted many buildings, including those now occupied by the Germans. The pre-war hotel ‘SPARTAK’ was accommodated by a newly formed Commandant Office and ‘CONTINENTAL’ housed German officers of the ‘XXIX. Armeekorps’.  The rapid and uncontrolled spread of fire along both sides of Khreshchatyk Street was now possible due to the lack of water supply in conquered Kyiv. The Germans summoned their own fire brigade to the place, which set water supply directly from the river Dnipro.

Some local diversions (cutting the fire hoses) made additional problems and later a local Jew, presumably caught on the spot, would be announced as a ‘disruptor’. In total, the ‘Great Fire in Kyiv’ claimed the lives of at least 300 Germans (the vast majority were killed directly from explosions on the very first day) and damaged dozens of vehicles and some supplies inside the buildings. The explosions would have been even more numerous if several engineering companies had not intervened to defuse 670 mines, including one of 7 tons of dynamite at the Lenin Museum, which was to be triggered by radio The fire on Khreshchatyk, an offspring of NKVD, was brought under control as early as September 28. At that moment, the overwhelming majority of the buildings along the main street and some neighboring cozy streets turned into ruins and 50,000 people lost their homes and places of employment. 

‘Great fire in Kyiv’ 1941
The consequences of the ‘Great Fire’ in Kyiv in late September 1941
‘Great fire in Kyiv’ September 1941
German firemen try to master the fire

On September 26, when the city center of Kyiv was still embroiled in flames and the German firemen were on the streets, the members of ‘special units’ of the Einsatzgruppe C initiated comprehensive activity inside the city. As many as seven separate squads arrived in Kyiv the day before and now developed a network of interrogations in Kyiv, as well as within the POW camps and camps for civilians. The very same day September 26, 1941, witnessed the sadly remembered briefing, which foredoomed the fate of the Jewish population of Kyiv. Once the main forces of the SD and Police were already in the city, KURT EBERHARD, a newly appointed commandant of the occupational forces in Kyiv, convened a meeting with the next officers: 

  1. FRIEDRICH JECKELN. The ‘SS- und Polizeiführer’ (A Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied Soviet Union), was a man in charge of all Einsatzgruppen in the occupied territories of the USSR at the time. In August 1941 only 44,125 persons, mostly Jews were killed by the units under Jeckeln.
  2. OTTO RASCH. SS Brigadeführer and the commander of the Einsatzgruppe C.
  3. PAUL BLOBEL. SS Standartenführer and commander of the Sonderkommando 4a, an affiliation of Einsatzgruppe C.

The agenda of the ‘briefing’ was focused on the ‘retaliatory measures’, in actual terms the details of the upcoming reprisal. The possible copartnership of the Jews to the explosions and fire had been initially odious, even to the Army officers, who suffered (from the fire) the most. Regardless of the absence of facts, someone had to be blamed for the Khreshchatyk fire and the casualties among the Germans, which would dramatically become a pretense to annihilate every single Jew in Kyiv, a practice (blaming Jews) that had already been exposed to the different regions of the occupied Soviet Union. The negotiated (by a quartet of Eberhard-Jeckeln-Rasch-Blobel) action was assigned to be conducted mainly by the forces of Sonderkommando 4a under Paul Blobel, accompanied (herding victims together, forwarding them to the execution site, inner and outer security perimeter) by the members of two police battalions (45 and 303) and the members of Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. 

City center of Kyiv in the aftermath of the fire
The city center of Kyiv, devastated by a great September 24-28 fire
German sappers remove Soviet explosives from the building of the Lenin Museum. Kyiv 1941
German sappers remove Soviet explosives from the building of the Lenin Museum

 

29-30 SEPTEMBER MASSACRE IN BABI YAR

Melnikova street in Kyiv close to the Septermber 29, 1941 assembly point
Melnikova Street in the direction of Babyn Yar leaving the September 29 assembly point behind

On September 27, 1941, the very next day after the ‘Eberhard-Jeckeln-Rasch-Blobel’ briefing, the printed works of the Propaganda Company 637 of the Wehrmacht 6th army issued 2000 copies of the wall banners, printed in the premises of the 6th Army. Each of them included the same announcement in three languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and German (small letters in the lower right corner). On the next day (September 28) these banners with still warm printing inks were placed across the city of Kyiv by the members of ‘Ukrainische Hilfspolizei’ (Ukrainian Auxiliary Police). Simultaneously they shared a rumor, that all Jews would be sent to work camps. The older generation of civilians, who had been still recollecting times of the First World War, saw no existential threat in Germans, and the Jewish population of course had not anticipated themselves to be exposed to mass murder on a never-before-seen scale. More than that, the Lukyanivska railway freight station had been previously used for evacuation from Kyiv before its seizure by the Germans. 

Propaganda Company 637 of the Wehrmacht 6th army
German propaganda unit 637 uses a telephoto lens to photograph shelling of Soviet positions, Ukraine, August 1941

Along with that, the announcement included a passage, threatening any looter of the Jewish property with death on the spot. The vast majority of Jews had no other means to understand the events apart from evacuation: they collected documents and possessions and even hoped that their property would be secured ‘until better days’. As the ‘assembly point’ (the corner of Melnikova and Degtyarivska) was located close enough to a local freight depot (Lukyanivska, it had become another ‘appeasement’ for people. The very date of September 29 was chosen by the Germans for a reason. The Monday was to commemorate the main Jewish celebration of the year: Yom Kippur, a traditional time for hours-long prayer, and a visit to a synagogue.

All Jews of Kyiv (the original Ukrainian and Russian texts include the more abusive word ‘жид’, an ethnic slur with humiliating meaning “Yid”, yet widespread in the Soviet Union) and its suburbs are obliged to arrive at the corner of Melnikova and Degtyarivska (the banner in fact included a misspelling ‘Dokterivkska’), next to cemeteries on Monday, September 29 at 8 a.m. All should take documents, money, and valuables, as well as warm clothes, linen, etc. Any Jew, who would violate this order and would be found elsewhere, is to be shot. Any civilians, who search into the apartments, left by Jews, and take possession of the belongings, would be shot. 

A memorial to writer Anatoly Kuznetsov
A memorial to writer Anatoly Kuznetsov who was twelve years old when he read the German sign in September 1941
A memorial plaque in Ukrainian and German Babi Yar
A memorial plaque in Ukrainian and German which resembles the infamous September 28 message to the Jews of Kyiv

From the early morning of September 29, hours before the announced 8 a.m. (mainly in the belief to take a better place in the trains) thousands of representatives of the Jewish community of Kyiv had made their way to the stated site next to the corner of Melnikova and Degtyarivska streets. This very city district, historically known as ‘Lukyanivka’, was notable for its dense factory-and-works urban development. The assembly point of September 29, 1941, neighboured the ‘ARTEM’ factory (named after the Soviet Bolshevik the suppressor of the Ukrainian national movement), an enterprise, which had been evacuated to the East in the summer of 1941 as well as some Ukrainian industrial titans. The site was also close to the ‘Lukyanivska’ prison of 1862 and a local market, one of seven main in Kyiv. Regardless of the wide demography of the Jewish population in Kyiv, German policemen of the 45 Reserve Battalion (in some cases accompanied by locals) forced Jews to abandon their homes. Of course, not all Jews left their homes and thousands later went into hiding. At least a part of the accommodation was later given to the citizens, who had lost their homes in the fire in downtown. The men from Sonderkommando 4a were set up around 6 a.m. the same morning.

The so-called 'Lukyanivka House'
The so-called ‘Lukyanivka House’ built in 1902, is located just next to the square of the same name and a market
ARTEM factory
The front side of the ARTEM factory in 2023 just across the street from the 1941 assembly point
Lukyanivka Kyiv today
A modern look of the Lukyanivka square, now accommodated by shopping pavilions and a metro station lobby
Jews of Kyiv on the way to Babi yar
Jews of Kyiv on the way to Babi Yar, September 1941

Starting on an assembly site next to the ‘ARTEM’ factory, the Jews were to be headed further along Melnikova Street to the northwest. In less than 1.5 kilometers, this woebegone procession mainly of women, the elderly, and children (most of the able-bided men had been previously drafted into the army) faced the first improvised roadblock. It must be said that a greater proportion of people covered kilometers on foot across Kyiv to reach the initial assembly point. The Germans set on an obstruction, using a part of the anti-tank ditch and the remnants of the barricade (of barbed wire and sandbags) from the times of the siege of Kyiv, next to the crossroad with Pugacheva street (modern Academician Romodanov). It was this very place, where people were forced to abandon their carriages with belongings and no see-off accompanies were let go further. Rarely if ever, anyone, who crossed this initial barrier 1500 meters far from the starting point, would not be given out backward. In the early hours of September 29, a few hundred Jews made their way to a neighboring Lukyanivska railway freight station in expectation of being put on the train to a new place. They were brutally halted on the spot and then headed in the direction of the spurs of Babi Yar as the vast majority of people. 

The doomed procession of the Kyiv Jews, Septermber 29
September 29, 1941. The columns of Jews process across the streets of Kyiv
Jews of Kyiv September 9, 1941
This photo was taken by an officer of the 303rd Bremen Police Battalion on September 29, 1941, in Kyiv. The columns of Jews on their way across the capital
Melnikova Street Kyiv
One of the old buildings on Melnikova Street which stood here in 1941
Melnikova Street 12 next to Babi Yar
Melnikova Street 12 (number 48 in 1941) was built in 1938 for the Red Army officers and families and between September 1941 and October 1943 was accommodated by the SS soldiers and guards of the Syrets concentration camp

Right after the first security perimeter of barbed wire and armed guards, the crowd was to be divided into groups further down Melnikova Street to the West, along the southern wall of the old Jewish cemetery, which had been closed since 1937. The directed (by the German policemen) route then continued toward nearly the entrance to the cemetery, a two-story office building that has been preserved until nowadays. The groups of desolated persons, still unaware of the destination point, faced another improvised barrier on Melnikova Street and were headed to the left on Kagatna (since 1971 modern Hohlov family, since 2023 Gareth Jones) street. In 1941, the site of the modern military cemetery was no more than an uncultivated spot of land with bushes and trees. A special squad of Germans forced Jews to hand over the valuables and outer clothing on this open site next to garages of the former tank facilities, two of which can still be found today. A special heap had been formed for each type of clothing. 

After the second barrier on Melnikova street, people were driven to Kagatna (later Hohlov Family) Street
After the second barrier on Melnikova street, people were driven to Kagatna (later Hohlov Family) Street. The modern look.
Dorogozhyzka street in Kyiv, on the route to Babi yar ravine today
The corner of Kagatna (since 2023 Gareth Jones Street) and Dorogozhyzka Streets in the direction of Babi Yar
garages of the former tank facilities Babi Yar
Former garages of the old Soviet tank facilities now accommodate the local supermarket
Garages near Babi Yar
A place where thousands of people were forced to wait a night before being killed
Hohlov family Street
Now a not relevant memorial sign to Hohlov family Street, which was renamed in 2023 after Gareth Jones

Groups of 200-300 people, expropriated of the valuables and documents, now face another roadblock barrier, which had been set up to block access (to the locals) from the Southern part of Kagatna Street. The procession was then headed to the right on Dorogozhyzka Street. To the left, a street sits alongside Lukyanivske Orthodox Cemetery. A few dozen meters short of another anti-tank ditch in parallel with Dorogozhyzka, the now doomed groups of people were forcefully turned right in the direction of the spurs of Babi yar ravine. Fearful people were now able to hear distinct shots from the side of the ravine. The Germans made people run the gauntlet with dogs and unmercifully beat them with sticks. The far Southern-East spur of the Babi Yar ravine adjoined a large open ground site, now crowded with rounded-up Jews. People were now forced (under the threat of guns and sticks) to get clothes and shoes off. Forcing victims to undress before the execution was common practice for the Nazi executioners, allowing them to steal valuables and clothes, maximize humiliation, minimize the chance of escape, and individualize the victims turning them into a seemingly homogeneous mass rather than human beings and individuals. The open ground was now filled with bulks of belongings and valuables, destined to be assigned to possession of the occupational administration. Based on the German documents, pedantic as always, 137 trucks of personal belongings were ‘gathered’ following two ‘mass actions’ of Sonderkommando 4a in Zhytomyr (3145 people massacred on September 19) and Kyiv. The greater part of the clothes, first taken to a local school (modern 4 Nekrasovka Street) and managed by NSV (‘Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt’ or ‘The National Socialist People’s Welfare’ organization) would be exposed to disinfection and would find a second life among ‘Volksdeutsche’ and the residents of the SS hospital. In his post-war testimony Anton Heidborn, a member of the Sonderkommando 4a unit, claimed that it took Germand days to smooth out the banknotes from those killed. 

Germans sort belongings of the victims of Babi yar
September 29. The corner of Kagatna and Dorohozhychi streets. German soldiers sorted the belongings of the Jews

Those doomed to death were separated into small groups and convoyed down to the ravine under the supervision of Sonderkommando 4a officers. As for the open site itself, there was no direct visibility of the spurs of the ravine from that point: natural ups obscured the ravine, and narrow foot passes allowed it to get down. Fated Jews had a devastating ability to hear the gunshots as well as screams of the previous groups. Regardless of the conventional misinterpretation (that all people were killed on a very tiny section of the ravine) of the topography of Babi Yar, the 29-30 September 1941 massacre was put into action within a vast part of the ravine, at least 500 meters in length, including the so-called Western spur just to the sand quarry. The shootings were assigned to three separate killing squads, made of the mixed members of Sonderkommando 4a, Waffen-SS, and 45 police battalion: each of the squads operated in its part of the ravine. The German army supplied the killing squads with 100,000 rounds of machine guns and rifles. 

Every killing unit included 2-3 gunners armed with machine guns and pistols, a few accompanied to support munition and convoy men, who forwarded victims to the execution site. The victims were mainly shot in the back of one’s heads, had been hitherto brought to knees on the edge of the heugh, or even forced to lay down on the bodies of already massacred foregoers. As the number of victims increased in progression, the German executioners used to save ammunition, while killing several persons with one bullet or just pushing victims down the edge. 

Babi yar massarce: topography of the place. Babi yar today
I used the 1943 aerial photo of Kyiv to mark the September 1941 route of the Jews to the Babyn Yar Ravine
Babi YAr in the 1930s
The lower (Northern- part of the Babi Yar ravine as it looked in the 1930s. The erections in the far background are the shoe factory

AUGUST HAFNER, Obersturmführer und Kriminalkommissar (Police commissioner) Sonderkommando 4a was among the officers, who directly coordinated the process of the mass killings on the spurs of Babi Yar. A man, who on the evening of September 30 received an order to get down the ravine and to supervise the finishing of the victims, would live until the year 1999 and die of aging changes, complicated by Parkinson’s disease. Speaking about the members of the 303rd police battalion, its soldiers played no direct part in the mass shootings and were mainly engaged in securing the perimeter and the expropriated property of the killed Jews here in the ravine and the city within abandoned apartments. As the process of mass killing grew progressively, the bodies at the bottom of the ravine were intentionally banked with earth. As early as September 30, the edges of the used sections of Babi yar were blasted by the Wehrmacht unit (Pioneer Battalion 113) and the distortion of the landscape can be examined in the 1943 air photos, despite some factless after-war contortion. In the early days of October 1941, the Germans brought hundreds of Soviet POWs to conduct work on the cover-up of the bodies. Despite German domination in the occupied territories, the Nazis had few reasons to still conceal the mass murders. The openness of the mass actions could have harmed further actions, as well as made the local population less controllable and submissive. More than that, the Germans did not want foreign propaganda to use evidence of Nazi crimes against the regime. 

Septermber 29, 1941 Germans sort the taken belongings of the victims of Babi yar
September 29, 1941. The Germans sort the taken belongings of the victims of Babi Yar next to the ravine and the pre-war military cemetery

On September 29, the first among two days of the mass action in Babi Yar, the killing squads shot Apr. 22,000 people until around 6 p.m. and the latter 12,000 would be massacred on September 30. People, who were not executed on the first day, were taken to the garages of the pre-war tank repair premises and spent the night waiting for execution. The figures far outnumbered the ‘expectations’ of the units on the spot, who had been in wait of 5-6 thousand people. During the day the killing squads were supplied with hot food brought by mobile field kitchens. On the evening of the first day of the shooting, the German executioners were given alcohol, schnapps in particular. Even though the ‘active phase’ of the shootings in Babi yar lasted until October 3, the absolute majority of the Jews in Kyiv became victims in the course of the September 29-30 action. In consonance with the Einsatzgruppe C operational report on October 7, the infamous ‘Ereignismeldung UdSSR Nr. 106’, these two days witnessed the massacre of 33 771 Jews. These dramatic figures included a small proportion of men. The greater part of the male Jews of Kyiv had been called to arms or evacuated with the strategic enterprises to the East back in the summer. The figure would become the greatest ‘capacity of death’ during the Holocaust, which left behind the notorious ‘daily’ death toll of either Treblinka or Auschwitz Birkenau. Approximately 22,000 victims in less than 12 hours, almost 34,000 in 36 hours. Never before, were the Nazis able to exterminate so many Jews in such a short time even compared to the massacre of 23 600 Jews at Kamenetz-Podolsk in August 1941. Two other mass killings in the years to follow, which may be regarded as even much inferior to Babi Yar, were the notorious ‘Operation Harvest festival’ in the Lublin district with its 42 000 Jews killed in three days, and 40 000 Polish civilians of the Wola district murdered during the Warsaw Uprising in two days in August 1944.

In total, only during September 1941, the German special squads massacred 136 000 Jews in Ukraine alone, including 34 000 in Kyiv, 16 000 in Berdychiv, 4,000 in Zhytomyr, 15 000 in Vinnytsia, 8000 in Kherson, 7000 in Mykolaïv, 5200 in Kirovohrad and in hundreds of other locations. Babi Yar is also distinguished by the absence of the usual preliminary procedures, census, or ghettoization. In contrast to the more common German practice of registration of Jews, isolation, forced labor, and exploitation, which usually lasted up to two months in other locations, the Jews of Kyiv were exterminated within two weeks after occupation. In contrast to detailed reports by Einsatzgruppe C, the Wehrmacht reports distanced themselves from the massacre, though only several army unit records stationed in Kyiv in the Fall of 1941 survived. For example, the intelligence reports of the 6th Army and the Twenty-ninth Army Corps missing pages regarding late September and early October.

The upper spur of the Babi yar ravine today, Kyiv, Ukraine
One of the upper spurs of the ravine: the primary site of the 1941 mass killings

The principal proportion of the victims in the Babi Yar massacre was formed by women, children, and senior citizens: the latter included sick and bedridden patients. As concerns those Jews, who deviated from the ‘8 a.m. September 29’s order, they would become a target for the round-ups to come. Apart from local collaborators, a fastening historical sore of the history of Ukraine in WWII, a significant number of brave citizens did risk their lives to assist and hide surviving representatives of the Jewish population. More than 400 men and women from Kyiv would be inaugurated as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ for their acts of bravery in saving the Jews during the German occupation. 

The round-up of Jews in Kyiv 1941
The round-up of Jews in Kyiv

Apart from a younger generation, women and elderly people, the first victims of the Babi Yar mass killing, extended to Soviet prisoners of war, male Jews in particular. As the recent comprehensive historical examination reveals, 29 September 1941 was not the very first day of the ‘Vernichtungskrieg’ or ‘War on annihilation’ mass actions in Babi yar, Kyiv. The cross-study of the testimonies as well as preserved German documents (in contrast with conventional Holocaust deniers’ belief, that the Babi Yar massacre is one of the most documented crimes in history) illustrate earlier ‘Sonderauftrag’ or ‘special tasks’ on the location, though to a lesser extend. In reference to several testimonies of the locals with then-residence close to Babi Yar ravine, the very first days of the occupation (starting from September 19) witnessed small groups of the Soviet POWs being forwarded towards the ravine. The forward detachment of the Sonderkommando 4a entered Kyiv next to Wehrmacht already on September 19. Originating from September 28, a day before the infamous mass action, spurs of the Babi yar ravine had become the last resting place for male Jews among the prisoners of war from the DULAG-201 camp nearby. Daily up to October 3, 1941, from 10 to 15 trucks with male Jews would be taken to Babi Yar mainly with no way back for the victims. 

Babi yar today
The upper spurs of the Babi Yar ravine: primary location of the killings

On October 2, 1941, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the Third Reich, visited the city of Kyiv as a part of his ‘working visit’ to occupied Ukraine. FRIEDRICH JECKELN, one of the architects of the Babi yar massacre and the annihilation of the Jews in Kyiv, reported to the Reichsfuhrer on the results of the ‘Sonderauftrag’ and later organized a gala party for the executioners under his command. Jeckeln made a pompous speech all while condoning the crimes. The overwhelming majority of the members of the special squads (beyond Kyiv as well) used to regard the fate of their victims indifferently and cold-bloodedly, conventionally justifying taken measures, thus mas killing. Any disaffection on the killing of helpless civilians and POWs in Kyiv was voiced during this ‘festive occasion’. Along with that, the German executioners included a small proportion of men, who empathized with the victims of the racial war and even took diligent actions.  The massacres of the Jews had been carried out with relative publicity, with the knowledge of the Wehrmacht and civilian occupation authorities, and by no means only by SS units. In April 1942, Victor Klemperer, a German literary scholar of Jewish origin from Dresden, made an entry into his well-famed ‘I will bear witness’ war-time diary regarding the ‘Horrific mass murder of Jews in Kyiv’. The heads of small children smashed against walls, thousands of men, women, adolescents shot down in a great heap, a hillock blown up, and the mass of bodies buried under the exploding earth’, told by a local carpenter (who had served as a driver for military police in Ukraine in 1941) to Klemperer’s Aryan wife. News of the massacre at Babi Yar in Kyiv spread rapidly, including to German officers stationed in France at that time. The officers who were transferred from Ukraine to Paris provided accurate details of the massacre in Kyiv as early as October 1941. As for the Soviet side, the first reports about the massacre in Babi Yar in Kyiv reached the government in Moskow as early as November 1941. Despite the horrific revelations on the occupied territories, the orchestrated genocide of the Jews was silenced in favor of the later known phrase: ‘peaceful Soviet citizens’. Information reached the West for the first time on November 18, when a telegram from Lviv reached London through Istanbul, informing about the massacre in Kyiv of 35,000 people, the figure which was close to correct.

 

BABI YAR IN 1941-1943

Mass shootings of the Soviet POWs in late September and early October and the annihilation of the Kyiv Jewish population on September 29-30 were not fated to become the last mass actions in the spurs of the Babi Yar ravine. A maze of eyewitness testimonies, operational reports of the Einsatzgruppe C (Sonderkommando 4a in particular), and additional German documents” all bear evidence of the elongation of mass killings on a situational scale in the course of October-November 1941 and further. In early October, August Hafner, one of the managing officers of Sonderkommando 4a and on-the-spot supervisor of the September 29-30 mass action, made his return way from the occupied territories to Germany with another visit to Kyiv. He took in Babi Yar to witness mass killings still in progress on a lesser scale and gave a cold-blooded hearing to a report on Apr. 35 thousand people were already annihilated. 

The SS soldiers ransack the belongings of the massacred Jews in the sands quarry in Babi yar
October 1941. The SS soldiers ransack the belongings of the massacred Jews in the sand quarry in Babi Yar
Personal belongings of the victims in Babi yar
October 1941. Personal belongings of the victims in Babi Yar. The photo from the notorious series was taken by Johannes Hähle, a 35-year-old Wehrmacht photographer from the Propaganda Company 637, who accompanied the 6th Army during Barbarossa.
Babyn Yar in color
Clothes, a notebook, a bottle of wine

After September 30, Germans deployed a network of round-ups to hunt down and take to Babi yar (thus kill) those Jews from Kyiv and its vicinity, who had previously evaded the annihilation. The local collaborative policemen forced housekeepers and concierges in Kyiv to report once they saw Jews or former Communist party members in the households: the disobedience was threatened by death. The new death toll included elderly people and bedridden patients, who had no physical ability to walk on their own and thus comply with the order to present themselves on September 29. Seeing that the greater part of the upper spurs of the Babi Yar had already contained an enormous figure of bodies, banked up with earth, the Germans used to choose different locations further along the mainstream of the ravine to the North, including a large sand quarry, that would be depicted within a series of the colored photo, preserved until today. According to preserved German documentary evidence, ‘Polizei-Regiment Süd’ (Police Regiment South), comprising 45 and 303 police battalions, carried out another four ‘actions’ on October 1, 2, 8, and 11 respectively before its transfer out of Kyiv on October 14. Jews were also killed in retaliation operations with a documented proportion of 50% (Order on October 10, 1941, issued by German army commander in Ukraine). Later on, another notorious unit Einsatzkommando 5, also a part of Einsatzgruppe C, conducted a series of mass executions in Southern and Central Ukraine. Its commander SS-Obersturmbannführer August Meier, an NSDAP member since 1933, wrote a report in which he stated that ”15 “political officials,” 21 “saboteurs and looters,” 414 “hostages” and “10,650 Jews” were shot in Kyiv between 2 and 18 of November 1941. Meier would survive the war and live free until 1959 and be put into custody where he committed suicide in 1960. 

Babi yar massarce color photos
An SS soldier in the foreground, in a cap, with a pistol in a holster on his belt, squatted down by things and turned away from the lens of the cameraman.
Personal belongings of the victims in Babi yar 1941
A leg prosthesis among the belongings is the reminded, that elderlies and handicapped were among the victims of the massacre

The next chapter of the dramatic history of the mass killing in Babi Yar in Kyiv was shaped by the annihilation of persons with mental disabilities, patients of the Mental Health Clinic after Pavlov, a medical institution that had been historically located next to the spurs of the ravine. As early as October 13, 1941, two trucks with SS soldiers and members of the Order Police got around the facility. They closed around the unit wing with sick Jews, all while breaking into wards and forcing patients to leave the building. Being urged with wooden sticks and tree limbs, the doomed Jews were convoyed to the edge of the hospital territory at the very Babi yar edge, to find their death at the bottom of the ditch 5 meters in length and 2 in width. The killing process adopted the procedure of the previous mass actions: patients were forced to lie on the bottom of the ditch to be shot in the head. The ‘Aktion’ lasted an hour and demanded the lives of 308 Jewish people with mental disabilities, mainly men and a few women.

Belongings of the victims in the Babi yar massacre

The German operational report on November 12 would include a passage on a ‘distinct mental burden’ for the German soldiers to suffer while killing insane persons back in October 1941. As early as January 8, 1942, the Germans would bring the infamous ‘gaswagen’, which had already been probed in Poland, to Pavlow Medical Clinic in Kyiv. On that day another 300 sick people, not Jews this time, were asphyxiated to death. In March and October 1942 another two actions with ‘gaswagen’ would be put in action to eliminate the remaining patients. All the bodies were carried to the unmarked graves in Babi Yar ravine. Along with that, a few thousand Soviet prisoners of war who died of starvation or mass shooting would be buried in graves in proximity to the Hospital in the course of the 1941-1943  occupational years.   

Soviet prisoners of war in Babi yar
About 150 prisoners of war are captured in the frame. The group in the foreground is noteworthy: an SS escort is talking to two peasant women or residents of the suburbs
Soviet prisoners of war in Babi yar 1941, Kyiv
October 1941. Soviet POWs were forced to cover the bottom of the Babi Yar ravine with the ground. On the helmet of the German soldier back to the cameraman the emblem of the “SS” troops is clearly visible.

On April 1, 1942, the German occupation authorities conducted a population census in Kyiv, which indicated 352,000 inhabitants of Apr. 400,000 at the time of September 19, 1941. That census identified only 20 Jews alive in Kyiv (the figure, of course, did not include those in hiding). In the early months of 1942 new victims used to be brought to Babi Yar from the local Gestapo prison in Kyiv. As the vast majority of the Jews had already been annihilated, the special squads addressed themselves mainly to captured communists and the civil population. The Germans sometimes did not conceal their crimes and made communiques of them to provoke fear and submission among the population in Kyiv. On November 2, 1941, Major General Eberhardt openly confirmed the execution of 300 men for ‘subversive activities’ and another 400 were massacred and documented in the communique on November 29 for sabotaging a telephone wire. In 1942, the Gestapo shot at Babi Yar the editor of Ukraïnskoé Slovo together with a group of Ukrainian nationalists. The later breakdown with the Ukrainian nationalistic formations led to mass killings of their members, including actions in Babi Yar. In the twilight of the occupation, the mass shootings were carried out within an anti-tank ditch in parallel with Dorogozhyzka Street and within the old killing sites in the upper spurs of Babia Yar ravine. In a wider sense, these new victims used to form a ‘new layer’ of bodies on the bottom of the ravine, being steadily blanked with the earth. The last victims in Babi Yar did not last only a month to witness the liberation of Kyiv. In October 1943 the Germans shot some civilians, who had evaded the order to leave Kyiv. 

Johannes Hähle Babi yar
The exact locations for Johannes Hähle’s photos on 01.10.1941 when compared to the 26.09.1943 aerial photograph and modern view. The terrain of the sand quarry was turned into a Syrets sub-camp with new erections, which were absent in 1941. The Western spur slightly changed.
Look in the past
One of the stones with monocular and a historical photo from 1941, during my visit to Babi Yar in 2022
Babyn Yar Massacre 1941
That is one of the images you may see through the monocular. The position of each stone marks the exact spot where the picture was taken
Residential building Babi Yar
Despite public criticism, a giant 25-storey residential building was built on the site of the part of the former Western spur, the location of the most intense killing in 1941
The Western Spur of Babyn Yar
Before finishing the skyscraper, a wooden cross commemorating the memory of the victims was vandalized and destroyed so as not to distort the prestigious outlook

TURN THEM TO DUST: THE COVER-UP

By the summer of 1943 the military setbacks of the Third Reich, as well as the rampant Soviet offensive in Ukraine, approximated the liberation of Kyiv. PAUL BLOBERL, the former chief officer of Sonderkommando 4a (until January 13, 1942) was now entitled to an order to eliminate the traces of mass killings within still-occupied territories of the Soviet Union, in Kyiv in particular. The operation on the cover-up of the crimes against humanity was initially put under the ‘top secret’ procedure and codenamed ‘AKTION 1005’ (Action 1005). The detachment squads assigned to the task under Blobel were codenamed ‘SONDERKOMMANDO 1005’.  In his testimonies in Nuremberg in 1947, Blobel would testify that the order (on the cover-up of the crimes and new operation) originated from Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA (Reich Main Security Office) directly from Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, Chief of Gestapo as far as September 1942. At that time the idea was rejected. Once received this new ‘responsible mission’, Blobel assigned HANS-FRITZ SOHNS as his entrusted person in Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU). 

For the sake of the cover-up of the traces of the mass murders in Ukraine, two special squads were to be formed as early as the summer of 1943 after Blobel had received three consecutive approvals in June, July, and August. The timing was more suitable because the ground was now not frozen and the perpetrators accumulated a storage of gasoline for burning the corpses. It is worth mentioning that the greater proportion of the fuel for the ‘Aktion’ was taken from the fuel sources in Ukraine. Thus Ukrainian gasoline was used to burn victims in Ukraine. In early August in Kyiv: Sonderkommando 1005a was under the command of Ernst Baumann and in late August in Dnipropetrovsk Sonderkommando 1005b was under Fritz Zietlow. Each of these detachment units was composed of the representatives of the Order Police (the overall supervision) and 30 to 40 key staff to secure the process. The proximate operation on burning the corpses in Kyiv (anyway bodies were the key evidence) with Babi Yar as the primary location was put into operation on August 18, 1943. On those first days, the immediate fulfillment was carried by Sonderkommando 1005a, and as early as early September, Sonderkommando 1005b from Dnipropetrovsk (once finishing its own operation. Two years before, from October 13 to 15 1941 the Germans massacred up to 10,000 Jews, mainly women, and children in the ravine on the outskirts of the city under the supervision of Friedrich Jeckeln) and were taken ‘to the aid’ to Kyiv. Later, SK 1005-B would be assigned to destroy evidence in Kryvy Rih, and Mykolaïv before leaving Ukraine in January 1944. SK 1005-A participated in digging out mass graves in Berdychiv, Bila Tserkva, Uman, and Kamianets-Podilsky. 

The cover-up of the mass crimes in Babi yar 1943
The late November 1943 photo of the former killing site with the traces of the pyres

The overall process of burning corpses in Babi yar is thoroughly documented both in after-war witness testimonies of the Soviet inmates, who did the immediate ‘job’, and of the Germans themselves, including Paul Blobel. Already on August 18, 1943, Sonderkommando 1005a initiated works on the exhumation and cremation of the bodies of the victims of ‘Vernichtungskrieg’ (war of annihilation) in the Babi yar ravine in Kyiv. The unit was formed of 8 to 10 members of the SD, and up to 30 members of the Order Police under the overall supervision of the SS officer Ernst Baumann. In the function of a brutal working force for digging and burning tens of thousands of corpses, the Germans brought more than 300 male inmates, including 100 Jews, from the nearby SYRETS CONCENTRATION CAMP, located next to the limits of the ravine. The members of the local Ukrainian Auxiliary Police were not engaged this time to preserve maximum confidentiality. On the sixth day of the ‘work’, the inmates revealed the first large mass grave to witness thousands of corpses of children, the elderly, and women. The bodies were taken from the ditch with hooks and shovels to be assisted by an excavator later brought by the Germans to speed up the process. One of the unnamed mass graves included up to 2000 bodies of the killed Soviet prisoners of war and another 500 corpses of the insane patients from PAVLOW Clinic. 

The after-war photo of the Babi yar ravine
A photo of the Western spur of the ravine

The operation on exhumation and burning of the bodies took six weeks. The inmates in irons and under the cruel supervision of the guards were forced to erect large open-air improvised crematoriums. They used tombstones from the Old Jewish cemetery nearby, iron fences, railway metal tracks, and firewood. The improvised construction was covered with corpses, layer by layer, up to 2000 bodies at a time and 4 meters in height, doused with petrol and oil, and then flamed. It used to take up to two full days to burn down all the corpses in a separate cremator. The German weather reports of the period in Kyiv included a euphemism ‘Meterorwasser’ (atmospheric condensation) over the sites of the mass cremation and another euphemism ‘Wolkenholle’ (cloud height) was temporarily used to cover the smoke from the numerous piles. After the cremation, the inmates of the Syrets camp were forced to grab the remnants of the bones and grind them into dust along with the remnants of the tombstones. Later on, the dust was to be griddled out regarding golden valuables, and silver crowns before being dispelled across the spurs of the Babi yar ravine. In the course of these six weeks of ‘Sonderaktion 1005’, the locals near Babi Yar used to witness black smoke with an overpowering stench. 

The site of 'Aktion 1005' in Babi yar, Kyiv, Ukraine
The remnants of the improvised open cremators
The spurs of Babi yar 1944
A section of the Western spur of the ravine where the pyres were set up

On the night of September 29, 1943, exactly two years after the 1941 mass action in Babi Yar, a few dozen inmates, who had been kept inside the ravine to conduct a cremation process, succeeded in picking a lock of their foot cuffs by using stolen instruments. The prisoners worked out the bars on their self-made dugouts (in which they had lived in the very spurs of Babi Yar) and escaped from the bounds of the secured perimeter. Every second of the escapees was caught by the Germans and killed on the spot, yet fifteen (alternative estimate is 18) were lucky enough to break through, to survive the war and later they became among the most ‘valuable’ and fact-full eyewitnesses of the ‘Aktion 1005’.

The very next day, September 30 each of the remaining inmates of the initial 300-330 workers was shot on the spot of their recent work. As regards the exact locations for cremation during ‘Aktion 1005’ in August-September 1943, already at the end of the year the committee of investigation would document the remnants of the open cremators, dugouts for the inmates and human remains including a considerable amount of ashes with bone remains all within the upper spurs of the Babi Yar. Summing up the documented shreds of evidence, the major works of the ‘Aktion 1005’ operation were conducted within an area of the Babi yar ravine between modern Melnikova, Dorogozhyzka, Oranzhereyna (which did not exist in 1941-1943) and Olena Teliha streets, on spots of the main shootings back in 1941. 

remnants of the dugouts, where the inmates used to live on the site of the 'Aktion 1005'
The remnants of the dugouts, where the inmates used to live on the site of the ‘Aktion 1005’

 

UNMASKING THE TERROR: INVESTIGATION

The advancing troops of the Red Army liberated Kyiv as early as November 6, 1943, thus drawing the space of twenty-six months of the German occupation. On the large, the capital of Ukraine avoided turning into ruins, yet as many as 180,000 people as of Apr. 930, 000 in 1941 were still within the city limits. As soon as the city was free once again, a group of Soviet officers and military correspondents drove up to a ravine of Babi Yar to prove or shake out the spreading rumors of mass killings, which had already proliferated outside Kyiv and even Ukraine. This first group of military men revealed human remains, clothes, and burned relics of the cremation: all evidence would be filed in documents and military communique. 

A group of American journalists in Bai yar 1943
A group of American journalists as well as Soviet investigators and witnesses in Babi Yar, in November 1943
UNMASKING THE TERROR: INVESTIGATION
A commission in the Babi Yar Ravine

Expeditiously on the heels of the findings, the Soviet government ventured an unprecedented move toward a conventionally proprietary totalitarian state. Apart from the Soviet journalists, several Western military correspondents were taken to Babi Yar in November 1943 to authenticate the site of the mass killings, which had been used by Germans during the occupation. The Western delegation included among others, Bill Lawrence and Bill Downs. Lawrence had already been famous back home due to his coverage from the Pacific theatre of war: he would be later exposed to criticism for, as some considered, a ‘needless sympathy to the Reds’. Anyway, the coverage from Babi Yar made the headlines both in Soviet and US media and shattered the recent skepticism (in Western media) regarding the genocide on an industrial scale, the one which would be overcome only in 1944-1945 with the horrors of the concentration (Buchenwald, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen) and death camps. The US correspondents were unexpectedly granted a free hand to interview some among those inconsiderable in numbers, who had avoided death in the ravine, former inmates of the Syrets concentration camp in particular.  

‘Extraordinary Commission on Verification and Investigation of Acts of Atrocities of the Nazis’
The members of the Extraordinary Commission on Verification and Investigation of Acts of Atrocities of the Nazis
Mass graves in Babi yar
One of the mass graves in the area of Babi Yar and the Syrets concentration camp

In the aftermath of the authentication of the mass killings in Babi Yar on the heels of liberation, by the 1943 year’s end, the Soviets assigned an ‘Extraordinary Commission on Verification and Investigation of Acts of Atrocities of the Nazis’.  A wide range of the assigned initiatives was focused on investigating the sites of the mass murders in Babi yar, criminalistic expert examination of the human remains, and the infrastructure of the cover-up and cremation. The commission conducted a medical examination as well as an interrogation of witnesses and those who survived the massacre. In contrast to some factless after-war distortion of facts (that no traces of crimes were ever found in Babi Yar), the investigators exhumed five large mass graves: two with bodies and the other three with burned human remains. The commission authenticated the remnants of the burned cemetery fences (which had been used for cremation), tombstones, blooded children’s clothes, men’s and women’s clothes, and articles of daily use such as money, glasses, toothbrushes, and brushes. Along with that, the territory of the nearby Syrets concentration camp revealed its devastating secrets with mass graves. 

The recovered mass graves 1944, Kyiv, Ukraine
The Soviet investigators revealed another mass grave in the area
The recovered belongings of the victims in Babi yar massacre
The recovered belongings of the victims

The after-war trials against German war criminals, who were directly responsible for the mass killings in Kyiv, in Babi Yar in particular, have their own broad geography and history. Some of the trials were put into action in Kyiv and other cities of the Soviet Union and a number abroad, mainly in Germany. The testimonies on the Babi yar massacre were voiced in Nuremberg, particularly within an ‘Einsatzgruppen Trial’. 

KURT EBERHARD, a war-time commandant of Kyiv and general-major of Wehrmacht, who summoned the infamous September 26, 1941, briefing and in first person ordered the act of reprisal against the Jewish population of Kyiv, committed suicide in American captivity in 1947.

In 1948 the US special court sentenced PAUL BLOBEL, the former commander of Sonderkommando 4a, and the men who had been nominated for a War Service Cross for the execution of the Kyov Jews, to death, and would be executed On June 7 at Landsberg Prison, a site of Adolf Hitler’s incarnation in 1924.

OTTO RASCH, the high officer of the infamous Einsatzgruppe C, Blobel’s immediate chief, never faced a death sentence. His trial was postponed due to health grounds: Rasch would die a natural death from Parkinson’s disease and dementia on November 1, 1948, at the age of 56.

AUGUST HAFNER, Obersturmführer und Kriminalkommissar (Police commissioner) Sonderkommando 4a, the man, who directly coordinated the shootings in Babi Yar, lived to see his 87 birthday and died of natural causes in 1999 in Germany. He spent only eight years in prison between 1968 and 1976 and was released due to ‘health issues’, which would not bother him to live another twenty-three years.

HEINRICH HANNIBAL, commander of the 303 police battalion was a figure of the trial in the 1960s in West Germany, yet he was never prosecuted for his war crimes and faced natural death in 1971 at the age of 81.

FRIEDRICH JECKELN, ‘Höhere SS-und Polizeiführer Russland-Süd’ (Higher SS and Police Leader), the man who used to supervise the annihilation of the Jewish population of Kyiv, was sentenced to death for his Crimes against Humanity and hanged on February 3, 1946, in the city of Riga in front of 4000 viewers.

MARTIN BESSER. The first commander of the 45th Reserve Police Battalion, NSDAP member since 1933 and SS member since January 1941, was charged with the accusation of killing 33 771 Kews in Kyiv as late as May 1971, along with one of the company officers (2d company) major Engelbert Kreuzer (fifty-seven years old in 1971), and former sergeant Fritz Foberg, sixty five-years-old. Martin was 79 years old (born on March 13, 1892) when the trial began and in the course of the previous three decades, he spent only three years as a prisoner of war between 1945 and 1948. During the 1971 court, Martin Besser was classified as ‘lifelong unfit’ to face the trial. Fritz Foberg collapsed during the hearings or pretended to be incapable and was regarded unfit as well. In the end, only former major Engelbert Kreuze got his verdict after openly speaking about his participation in the shootings of innocent people. Kreuze got only seven years in jail.

RENE ROSENBAUER. On the same trial by the Regional Court in the city of Regensburg (Germany) which accused Besser, Rosenbauer, 82 years old at that time, was declared physically unfit to stand trial. He had been living in the town since the end of WWII.

The war Criminals Otto Rasch and Paul Blobel
Post-war photographs of Paul Blobel and Otto Rasch during their trials

 

BABI YAR AFTER THE WAR

In the early hours of liberation on November 6, 1943, the population of Kyiv amounted to nothing more than 180,000 citizens of Apr. 400,000 in September 1941. The territory of the wartime Syrets concentration Camp was turned into a temporary camp for German POWs. As for the ravine of Babi Yar, it was left to no changes in the course of the first after-war years. The new year of 1944 faced an issue of the resurrection of the city infrastructure of Kyiv, which would soon welcome hundreds of thousands of former inhabitants on their way from evacuation and army service. A state commission evaluated the damage of the German occupation at 10 billion rubles. The historical district of ‘Kurenevka’, which had historically included the Babi yar ravine, faced devastating transport, sewer, and water systems. To ensure delivery of the raw material supply for the ever-growing capacities of the building enterprises, a part of the Babi Yar ravine was assigned to a sand quarry as late as October 1944. The city plan for 1948-1950 would already include clauses on the erection of a memorial park to commemorate the victims of the Nazi crimes in Babi yar, initially planned for the inauguration of 1950. 

BABI YAR AFTER THE WAR 1950
Young Larissa Sadosvka in Babi yar in 1950. Her mother was killed on the site back in 1941
Babi yar survivor Dina Pronicheva
One of the few Babi Yar survivors, Dina Pronicheva shares her testimonies about the mass killing in the ravine On September 29-30, 1941. A trial against the German perpetrators in Kyiv, January 24, 1946
BABI YAR AFTER THE WAR, Kyiv Ukraine
The infamous Western spur of the ravine, the site of the most dense killing actions

To preserve Kyiv’s general layout, several roads next to the former Syrets concentration camp and Babi Yar, are to be paved: the modern Ryzhska (1953), Sсhuceva (1953), Olena Teliha (1957) retrospectively. As early as 1950, regardless of the previous plans for a commemoration park with a monument, the city authorities authorized the so-called ‘Measures aimed at preventing the outgrowth of the Babi yar ravine’ using hydraulic deposition of soil from the nearby brickworks. A new agenda prescribed almost complete leveling of the Babi yar ravine to the level of the surrounding area, including its upper spurs, a site of the mass killings in 1941-1943 during the German occupation. The practical washing off the ravine was put into practice in 1954, including the location of the active gas pipeline. 

Gradually since 1954, the spurs of the Babi yar ravine had been washed off with soiled water, thereby dragging down the existing drain system, insufficient for the task from the very beginning. The problem was that the city bureaucrats decided to level the mainstream of the ravine with a pulp, a burdened stream of water, clay, and sand, which was now pumped to Babi Yar from the ‘Petrosky’ brick-yards № 1 and №2 (to the West) through a newly erected pipeline. The capacity of these brick enterprises had grown progressively in the years after the war and increased from 2.1 million bricks in 1945 to an enormous 31.7 million in 1950, four years before the washing of Babi Yar. By the early 1950s, at least 30 enterprises of local and national importance were already in operation in the area. 

The spurs of Babi yar ravine
The same section of the ravine in late 1943 or early 1944
The far perspective over the site of mass shootigs in Kyiv
The far perspective over the site of mass shootings
Baby Yar in the 1950s
The sign on the site of the Babi Yar ravine in the 1950s: ‘The dumping of earth and garbage is prohibited. Fine 300 rubles’.
Babyn Yar in the 1950s
A part of the Babi Yar ravine drowned in green in the 1950s before being dumped with water and clay

Millions of gallons of water with clay and sand, now a demanding issue for a drain system, start to overflow the spurs of the ravine and swamp the surrounding infrastructure: the fact that was indicated in the reports already in 1957. On March 13, 1961, a seawall dam, which had been keeping liquid mass for seven years, finally collapsed. A wall of pulp was four meters high flooded out and descended upon a ‘Kurenivka’ residential area to the northwest, drifting houses, cars and buses, trees, and people on its way. The flood damaged the local tram depot and ‘Spartak’s’ stadium, the latter was filled with liquid mass up to the upper tribune. The official governmental estimates voiced 145 victims of the disaster with another 143 hospitalized. The later estimations, based on the population density and residential records, give the figure close to 1500 those, drown in clay and sand. 

Millions of gallons of water with clay and sand in Babi Yar
Millions of gallons of water with clay and sand were the destroyers of the memory of tens of thousands of people, who were killed in the ravine in 1941-1943
Kurenevka tragedy 1961, Kyiv
The consequences of the 1961 Kurenevka tragedy were devastating destroying a whole city district with mud and clay from the ravine
Kurenevka tragedy 1961, Kyiv Ukraine
One of the buildings after the Kurenivka tragedy
Wooden cross to the victims of the Kurenivka tragedy
A wooden Cross next to a modern gas station commemorates the memory of the victims of Kurenivka tragedy in 1961
Kurenivka tragedy memorial
A modern memorial created by a dubious private organization was intended to tell people about the story of the Kurenivka tragedy. Bricks refer to the old brick factories, a pulp from which was washed into the ravine in the 1950s
Kurenivka tragedy 1961 tram depot
A tram depot which was flooded in 1961, and how it looks nowadays
A memorial to Tram depot victims Kurenivka tragedy
The official version about 145 victims looks odious as at least fifty tram depot personnel died during the March 13, 1961 flood

Already in 1962, the local authorities authorized the liquidation of the old Jewish cemetery of 26.9 hectares next to Babi yar ravine, from which the ‘Aktion 1005’ used to possess fences and tombstones for improvised crematories back in August-September 1943. That same year another clause assigned the erection of a TV center and later a sports complex on the site. The territory of the old Evangelistic cemetery to the East of Babi Yar now has free space for a television tower (should not be confused with a TV center to the northeast). In 1968 a new Oranzhereyna street connected Melnikova and Dorogozhyzka just 20 meters away from the site of the primary mass killings in 1941: the pavement works revealed another mass grave with Apr. 300 corpses. The territory of the former ravine, now hardly descending on the terrain, is to be occupied with a new park of local importance, generally completed up to 1980. 

Babi yar 1957
A construction plan of Kyiv from 1957. Melnikova Street was planned to go further and cut Babi Yar ravine into two parts, while Oranzhereyna to divide the ravine from the war cemetery
Aerial Kyiv 1966
An aerial view of the area in 1968 reveals a complete reshaping of the former ravine turning the former geological formation and a grave for tens of thousands of people into a flat terrain
Modern military cemetery and the TV tower (2020) near Babi yar
A military cemetery which was created in late 1943 and the TV Tower
The gates to the Military cemetery near Babyn Yar in Kyiv
The gates to the Military cemetery (created in 1943) facing Gareth Jones Street (former Hohlov family, former Kagatna)
Oranzhereyna Street Babi Yar
Semi-abandoned garages on Oranzhereyna Street just a few dozen meters from the ravine
Collaborative garage facility called 'Avtolubitel' near Babi yar ravine
A collaborative garage facility called ‘Avtolubitel’ (Auto enthusiast) next to the ravine

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, in 1965–1966, two rounds of a closed competition for memorial projects for those killed in Babi Yar were held. Well-known artists, sculptors, and architects took part in the competition, presenting dozens of sketch projects. None of the projects submitted to the competition was ever supported by the authorities. The jury’s decision was canceled, and the book of feedback from visitors to the project exhibition was removed. As early as 1971 the long-awaited decree enacted the commemoration of the victims of the German occupation with an erection of a monument within the upper spurs of the Babi Yar ravine. On July 2, 1976, Kyiv citizens finally witnessed the inauguration of the Monument to Soviet citizens and prisoners of war and officers of the Red Army, shot by the Nazis in Bani yar’. As conventionally in the other parts of the Soviet Union, the wording does not mention Jews, using the general ‘Soviet citizens’. Despite the previous leveling off of the spurs of the ravine and reshaping of the terrain, the construction works of the monument revealed human remains and a layer of ashes 10 cm thick. In 1991 the Monument was visited by U.S. President George Bush, Bill Clinton in 1995, and Pope Joan Paul II in 2001. As early as 1992 a new monument to the massacred members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was erected to the North of the Soviet one. 

Babi yar 1965 project
The project of the memorial in Babi Yar “When the world is collapsing” by artists Ada Rybachuk and Volodymyr Melnichenko, and architects Avraham Miletskyi and Mykhailo Budylovskyi, 1965.
Soviet war memorial in Babi Yar Kiev
The construction of the Soviet war memorial in the upper spurs of the ravine with a layer of ashes beneath it
Babyn Yar memorial
The opening ceremony of the Soviet memorial in Babi Yar, July 2, 1976
Ceremonial opening of the monument to "Soviet Citizens"
Ceremonial opening of the monument, July 2, 1976
Soviet memorial in Babi yar
‘Monument to Soviet citizens and prisoners of war and officers of the Red Army, shot by the Nazis in Babi yar’
Soviet monument today
Memorial plates in three languages
Babyn Yar memorial in Yidish
One of the three plates
Babyn Yar Memorial Site in Kyiv
One of the signs directing people to the Babyn Yar Memorial site
An alley with informational boards
An alley with informational boards regarding the history of Babi Yar

 

MONUMENTS IN BABI YAR RELATED TO THE TRAGEDY

Monument to Children, who was shot in Babi Yar". 2001
Monument to “Children shot in Babi Yar”. Unveiled in 2001
Monument to children Babyn Yar
The back side of the monument composition with the local metro station in the background
Memorial stone to mark the construction of Babi Yar Righteous Alley. 2011
Memorial stone at the start of the ‘Babi Yar Righteous Alley’ was unveiled in 2011 next to the Children’s Memorial
Memorial to Roma and Sinti in Babi yar ravine
A memorial stone with an inscription in Ukrainian devoted to the Roma and Sinti victims of Babi Yar was unveiled in 2011
Roma victims of Nazi atrocities
A symbolic Roma and Sinti wagon
Memorial sign to Eastern workers (Ostarbeiters). 2005
Two memorial stones were devoted to forced Eastern workers (Ostarbeiters). Unveiled in 2005 facing Dorogozhyzka Street. The smaller one commemorates 3 million Ukrainian citizens, who had been abducted by Nazi Germany during the Second World War
Memorial to ostrabaiters
A closer look at the memorial of 3 million Ukrainians who were forcibly taken to Germany
Commemorative stele in sign of the Jewish community and cultural center “The Heritage” establishment. 2001
The cornerstone of a never-erected Jewich Community and Cultural Center was erected in 2001 to the 60th anniversary of the massacre
Monument to T. Marcus – the Soviet Jewish underground fighter. 2009
A monument to Tetiana Markus, a famous Ukrainian Jewish underground fighter killed by the Nazis in 1943 and buried in Babi Yar
Momument to Olena Teliha Babyn Yar
Momument to Olena Teliha, Ukrainian poetess, OUN member. He and her husband were killed in February 1942. Unveiled in 2017 
To the Memory of Olena Teliha
To the Memory of Olena Teliha and her compatriots who died for the Independence of Ukraine
Memorial sign "Menorah" to Jews were shot at Babi Yar. 1991
‘Menorah’ memorial sign to all Jews executed in Babi Yar. Unveiled in 1991
Memorial sign-cross to shot clergy. 2000
A memorial stone and a wooden cross were devoted to Ukrainian clergymen who were shot in Babi Yar in November 1941. Unveiled in 2000
Memorial stone to clergy Baby Yar Kyiv
A stone next to a small wooden church devoted to the clergy killed here
On this spot in 1941 people were killed. God bless their soles
An inscription in Ukrainian says: ‘On this spot in 1941 people were killed. God bless their soles’. Erected in 2000
This memorial stone next to a modern giant residential building marks the end of the infamous Western Spur
This memorial stone next to a modern giant residential building marks the end of the infamous Western Spur. A modern skyscraper was built on the site of the most extensive shootings in Babi Yar. Take notice of the destroyed wooden cross behind.
Crystal Wall Babyn Yar
The dubious installment called ‘Crystal Wall’ was unveiled in 2021 by a private rusisian-sponsored organization
Another installation made by a private organization sponsored by anti-Ukrainian oligarchs in 2020 was highly criticized by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.
Monument to the writer A. Kuznetsov
A monument to the writer Anatoly Kuznetsov was unveiled in 2009 several kilometers away from the ravine
A memorial plaque next to the figure of young Anatoly Kuznetsov
A memorial plaque next to the figure of young Anatoly Kuznetsov in Ukrainian: ‘For the past not to repeat itself, find the courage to face it: you would find truth in the ‘Baby Yar’ book by Anatoly Kuznetsov (1929-1979)

My 2017 video commemorating the memorial site. 

The 1990s in the now independent Ukraine witnessed the inauguration of a monument to the victims of the former Syrets concentration camp, as well as another one commemorating the memory of three killed football players of ‘Dinamo’, the participants of the infamous 1942 ‘The Death Match’. In 2000 a new metro station ‘Dorogozhyzka’ was opened just on the site of the mass killings in Babi Yar. Already in 2001, a new monument (next to a metro station) commemorated children victims, killed by the occupants in Babi Yar. The same year a complex of monuments on the site was entitled with a ‘Historical landmark’ status. As early as 2017 a new alley with recovered tombstones from the Old Jewish cemetery was erected next to the former cemetery office building. preserved until today. The year 2018 witnessed an international architectural competition for the sake of erection of the ‘Holocaust Memorial Complex of Babi Yar’, participated by representatives from 36 countries. A private-financed project, which sparked public discussion in Ukrainian society was to be finished by 2023, but the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the Russian aggression against an independent country put the project on halt, especially because the private organization had been sponsored by Russian oligarchs who tended to integrate anti-Ukrainian narration and turn the side of remembrance in the Baby Yar ravine in a kind of an amusement park. 

 Dorohozhychi metro station
The Modern view of the Dorohozhychi metro station

I am very grateful to war archives, museums, libraries, private collections, and writers for the historical photos in this article. To the extent that some author or a copyright owner may not want some of the above black-and-white photos to be used for educational purposes here, please contact me for adding credits or deleting the pictures from the article.