Babi Yar is a ravine on the western outskirts of Kiev. On September 29-30, 1941, it was the site of the single largest Nazi shooting of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. This massacre also stands out as a vivid example of the German military involvement in the Holocaust. The advancing army captured Kiev, and within a week,a number of buildings occupied by the German military and civilian authorities were blown up by the NKVD, the Soviet Secret police. In retaliation, the Germans proceeded to kill all the Jews of Kiev. After they entered Kiev, the German army's first order of business was security. From the beginning of the Russian campaign, the Jewish communities were everywhere held responsible for the numerous incidents of resistance.

Many Jews were shot at Babi Yar after September, 1941, although wartime records that have been preserved do not mention figures for those shootings. In February, 1942, Kiev's mayor and some members of the Organization of Ukranian Nationalists were killed; if perhaps these crimes did not physically occur in Babi Yar, the Nazis still dumped the corpses there. Later the Nazis also used vehicles fitted with gas vents to murder other victims at the site. In the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, 33,771 Jews were murdered at Babi Yar. In the following months, Babi Yar remained in use as an execution site for "gypsies" and Soviet prisoners of war. Four survivors have estimated that over 100, 000 corpses were burned, and this became the official Soviet figure for the total number of victims of Babi Yar from 1941 to 1943.

Shootings by civilians, fires, and various kinds of sabotage - even massacres that had been in fact perpetuated by the NKVD during the panicked evacuations of the cities on the Galician border - were all taken as proof of the malignancy and cruelty of the Jews. However frequent such attacks, they were also improvised, which was characteristic of the special Soviet forces that conducted them. In Kiev, the planned evacuation had left Soviets enough time to engage in a campaign of sabotage and systematic destruction. Crops were destroyed or spirited away, and public buildings were blown up. Despite intensive measures to stop them, arson and explosives multiplied, and the city's center was devastated by a huge fire.

Over time, two thousand posters appeared all over the city, demanding that "All Jews living in the city and its vicinity must come to the corner of Mel'nikowskaja and Dochturovskaja streets at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning. They are to bring with them documents, valuables and warm clothes." Any civilian who failed to appear would be subject to summary execution. Some 33, 000 Jews who complied with the Nazi demand were escorted to Babi Yar. The method of elimination had been carefully planned. Wehrmacht commandos had supplied significant logistical equipment, including trucks. The Ukranian militia supervised the victims as they were compelled to disrobe and give up their valuables. They were then led along the rails to the ravine, where victims were grabbed by pairs of shooters.

One executioner forced the victim to lie face down on the ground with his or her head on the feet of the preceding victim. The second shot the victim in the neck. This highly standardized method presumed that victims would realize their fate only at the last moment. It also reduced the required space for the corpses. On the evening of the second day, Wehrmacht infantry units exploded the walls of the ravine to cover the corpses. After the German army suffered its first defeats, concern arose among the Nazis about the evidence of genocide. In late 1942 Paul Blobel was placed in charge of exhuming and burning corpses from the mass graves. One of the first such sites he worked on was Babi Yar. Despite Blobel's efforts, no sooner had Kiev been retaken in November 1943, than Soviet authorities inquired about the massacre.

When Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b.1933) wrote his famous poem "Babi Yar" in 1961, put to music by Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975), authorities condemned it as a deviation that contaminated the memory of a fascist massacre led against the Soviet republic. The first line of the poem, "No monument stands over Babi Yar" nevertheless led the Soviet government 1966 to contemplate one, which was erected ten years later with no mention that the victims were Jews. This was only rectified after the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991.

Paul Blobel was sentenced to death at Nuremberg and hanged in 1951. His subordinates were sentenced to heavy jail terms in the mid-1960's. Their trials, which took place in Darmstadt, as well as at Ulm and Frankfurt, brought about among Germans a new awareness of the magnitude of Nazi crimes.


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Berkhoff, Karel C. (2004). Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

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Sheldon, Richard (1988). "The Transformations of Babi Yar." Soviet Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Vera S. Dunham, ed. Terry L. Thompson and Richard Sheldon. Boulder, Colo. Westview Press.