This year marks the 84th anniversary of the mass shootings at Babyn Yar. On September 29-30, 1941, after the capture of Kyiv, one of the most tragic events of the Holocaust took place: the mass murder of the city's Jewish population.
Before the German invasion, about 160,000 Jews lived in Kyiv. This amounted to approximately 20 percent of the capital's total population. After the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, about 100,000 Jews fled Kyiv or were already serving in the Soviet army. By the time the Germans captured Kyiv, about 60,000 Jews remained in the city. Most of them were unable or unwilling to flee. They were mostly women, children, the elderly, and the sick.
On September 29-30, 1941, the SS, German police, and their auxiliary units murdered a significant number of the Jewish population that remained in Kyiv. The massacre took place in a tract called Babyn Yar. At the time, the ravine was located not far from the city.
The execution of the Jewish population at Babyn Yar was one of many mass shootings carried out by the German Nazis beginning in 1941. It was one of the largest massacres in a single location during World War II.
Babyn Yar was a killing ground for two years after the massacre in September 1941. Tens of thousands of people were killed there by the Germans who were stationed in Kyiv. In addition to Jews, those killed in Babyn Yar included patients of the local psychiatric hospital, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and civilians.
The killings at Babyn Yar continued until the fall of 1943 and stopped only a few days before Soviet troops retook control of Kyiv on November 6.
It is estimated that about 100,000 people were killed at Babyn Yar.
After the war, the Soviet regime silenced or distorted the memory of the victims and tried to destroy the ravine and surrounding cemeteries. However, it failed. Babyn Yar remained a warning of the danger of hatred, racism, ethnic hatred, persecution, and the destruction of people on ethnic, political, religious, or other grounds.
After the discovery and comprehension of the horrors of the Holocaust, the world community adopted a "never again" position, but genocides are still happening. Today there is a war in Ukraine. Rashists even borrow rhetoric from the Nazis, claiming to "solve the Ukrainian question," similar to Hitler's "solution to the Jewish question." Russia's so-called "anti-fascism" has become the main threat to Jews in modern Ukraine and has contributed to the desecration of Holocaust memory: Russian troops have shelled Jewish cemeteries, synagogues, and even Babyn Yar.
Peace, security, and balance in Europe and the world are possible only after Ukraine wins the war and all criminals are duly punished.