Babin Yar
The Babin Yar ravine near Kyiv was first mentioned in historical accounts in 1401, in connection with its sale by "baba" (an old woman), the cantiniere, to the Dominican Monastery. For several centuries the site had been used for various purposes including military camps, an Orthodox Christian cemetery and a Jewish cemetery which was officially closed in 1937.
Nowadays Babin Yar is known as a site of the most notorious massacre of Jews in the former Soviet Union. 33,771 Jews were killed there on September 29–30, 1941 by the Nazi according to German documents. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor, Major-General Friedrich Eberhardt, the Police Commander for Army Group South (SS-Obergruppenführer), Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. It was carried out by combined forces of SS, SD and SiPo.
After 10 days of occupation of Kyiv the Fascist troops started to shoot civilians. On September 29 the Jews of Kyiv gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto trains. The crowd was large enough that most of the men, women, and children could not have known what was happening until it was too late: by the time they heard the machine-gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. In fact, the ravine became a common burial place for Jews, Hungarians, Czechs, Gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians, prisoners, patriots, mentally handicapped and ill people. Many children, old people and pregnant women were mercilessly murdered there. According to the documents, over 100,000 people, some of them alive, were buried on the lands adjoining Babin Yar.
Upon the massacre the fascists created Sirez concentration camp, where they forced their captives to work hardly before murder. The survivors of the Sirez recall that every evening each fifth or each tenth prisoner was shot. If someone managed to escape, each third captive was murdered. Every day the Sirez was filled up with new victims. Some people were put to the basket of the machine that functioned so that the gas evaporations penetrated into the basket and people died of asphyxiation. Later the corpses were burnt in the ovens made of old Jewish tombstones. The ash of burnt people was used as a fertilizer for German fields. The money, valuables, underwear, and clothing of the murdered victims were turned over to the local ethnic Germans and to the Nazi administration of the city
The tragic events became a subject for numerous books, poems, movies, historical investigations, memoirs and paintings. Nowadays the site is marked by several monuments. Each year on September, 29 friends and relatives of the victims gather in Babin Yar to mark the horrible anniversary.