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BABI YAR, bah bee YAHR, was a ravine near Kiev in the Soviet Union and the site of one of the largest massacres in history. The Nazis murdered about 35,000 Jews there on Sept. 29-30, 1941, during World War II. The German army had captured Kiev and posted notices ordering the city's Jews to report for resettlement. The victims, carrying their belongings, marched to Babi Yar ravine, where special German military units machine-gunned them. By 1943, when the Germans retreated, the ravine had become a mass grave for more than 100,000 persons, most of them Jews. The Germans burned the bodies in an attempt to destroy evidence of the deaths. In 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a Soviet poet, wrote a poem called "Babi Yar" attacking prejudice against Jews. Dimitri Shostakovich, a Soviet composer, based part of his Symphony No. 13 (1962), also called Babi Yar, on Yevtushenko's poem. Leon A. Jick, The World Book Encyclopedia, World Book, Chicago, 1985, Volume 2, p. 3. |
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Ukrainians collaborated with the notorious Nazi Einsatzgruppen. Most of the Jews of Soviet Russia who perished under the Nazis were residents of the Ukraine. The young Soviet poet Yevtushenko memorialized their
martyrdom in his poem "Babi Yar." Babi Yar is a suburb of Kiev where tens of thousands of Jews were massacred. It is a matter of record that the population of Kiev lined the sidewalks and applauded when the Nazis led Jews to death.
Judd L. Teller, from his letter to the editor of The New York Times, April 16, 1964, in Walter Dushnyck (ed.), Ukrainians and Jews, The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, New York, 1966, p. 160. |