Babyn Yar Massacre Survivor: First-hand account

What You Need To Know:

✅ This week Ukraine marked 75 years since the Babyn Yar massacre. 
✅ Over the course of two days on September 29 and 30 in 1941 approximately 34,000 Jews were killed at the Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv. 
✅ In the following months, Nazi forces killed more than 100,000 people in Babyn Yar (Jews, Roma people, Communists, and Soviet prisoners of war). 
✅ In 1941, about a quarter of Kyiv’s population were Jews, that’s nearly 160,000 residents. 

This fall Ukraine marked seventy five years after Nazi forces killed nearly 34,000 Jews at Babyn Yar ravine. Dozens of events were organized during the week in collaboration with the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter initiative and the World Jewish Congress. The culminating ceremony took place at Babyn Yar on September 29. Officials and foreign dignitaries including Israeli President Reuven Rivlin attended the ceremony.  

Historians estimate that nearly 100,000 people were murdered at Babyn Yar during World War Two. It’s estimated that nearly one million Jews were killed in Ukraine during WWII. For decades, Soviet authorities did not commemorate the Babyn Yar massacre anniversary and officially referred to the victims as “Soviet citizens”. According to official records only dozens of people managed to escape the execution at the ravine. 

Hromadske spoke with one of the survivors of the massacre.