Non-Fictional Pages from the History of Babyn Yar.

It is not only from the pages of Vechirnii Kyiv [The Evening Kyiv] that I have discovered that there exists in New York, USA the newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo [New Russian Word] which frequently pours filth over Ukrainians, accusing them of being the greatest haters of Jews.  As evidence it cites the unsubstantiated collaboration of Ukrainians with the Nazis in the killing of Jews during World War II, especially at Babyn Yar.  Allegedly 300 thousand Jews were shot there.  I would like to recount a few facts about the events of those times, of which I happened to be an involuntary witness.  Perhaps these facts will help Jewish emigrants from Ukraine, most particularly former Kyivans, O. Burakovsky and V. Korotych to recognize the truth and to renounce the unsubstantiated implication of Ukrainians in imaginary crimes.

To begin, before the war there simply were not that many Jews in Kyiv.  Yes, Kyiv is a large city .  Having been made the capital of Ukraine in 1934, Kyiv expanded rapidly.  As the number of institutions and industries grew, so did the population.  By 1959 the city's population reached 1 million 104 thousand, and by 1965 1 million 332 thousand.  (These statistics are taken from the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia).  But before the war, the population of Kyiv was considerably smaller.  Unfortunately, I can't cite exact figures because the results of the 1939 census were not published, nor are they to be found in the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia.  I estimate that it was 800,000 to 900,000.  The percentage of Jews was significant — approximately 15-20 per cent — so that in Kyiv there couldn't have been more than 160-180 thousand Jews.

The Germans entered an evacuated Kyiv on September 19, 1941 — that is, 3 months (89 days) after the outbreak of the War.  What went on in Kyiv during those three months?  Besides the mobilization and the preparation of the city to resist the Germans, the city was being evacuated, a fact typically overlooked by people like Burakovsky and Korotych.  This evacuation clarifies a number of issues.  The evacuation was conducted by means of specially-assigned vouchers.  These vouchers were given out at work to managers, engineering and technical personnel, skilled workers, and office workers — not only for themselves but also for their families.  These people, then, were evacuated together with the factories and institutions themselves.  Jews and their families were evacuated to the East together with all the others.  Moreover, Jews were given preference in receiving evacuation vouchers because rumors were circulating throughout the city that the Germans were exterminating Jews.  The Jews, therefore, made every effort to procure these privileged vouchers.

In addition to the official evacuation there was also an unofficial one.  People with money were able to buy the evacuation vouchers without having been selected officially, and so could move East at their own expense.  As a matter of fact, being selected for evacuation produced the side effect of deferring one's mobilization.  In any case, by the 19th of September, Kyiv contained few Jews.  This was the conclusion of the Kyivans who were left behind.  This was my conclusion as well, because at Factory No. 300 where I worked, not a single Jew remained — they had all fled.  The chief engineer of the factory Y. M. Liubarsky, of Jewish nationality, ordered me to oversee meticulously the removal of the electrical equipment — and what could not be removed, to destroy.  He left Kyiv early in order to be on hand to receive somewhere in Zelenodolsk the equipment as it arrived and to supervise the resettlement of the workers who had been evacuated from Kyiv.

I was in possession of an exemption which freed me from mobilization during the period of evacuation of the electrical equipment of factory No. 300, and had an embarkation ticket covering myself and my family, and was in fact preparing to evacuate upon the completion of my assignment.  Unfortunately, the troop train in which I was supposed to depart on September 15 never left the station — the rail line to the East had been cut by the Germans.

And so I couldn't go anywhere and ended up in Hitlerite-occupied Kyiv.  Remnants of the Jewish population, it turned out, also remained in Kyiv.  Soon afterwards, the Germans posted on the streets of Kyiv announcements, written in German, Russian, and Ukrainian.  I don't recall the exact wording, but the gist is conveyed in the words quoted by I. Erenberg in his novel The Storm: "Jews of Kyiv and vicinity.  On Monday, September 29, at seven a.m. you are to appear with belongings, documents, and warm clothing on Dorohozhytsk street, beside the Jewish cemetery.  The penalty for failing to appear — death."

Presumably the Germans were aware of the evacuation and therefore knew that few Jews remained in the city, and for this reason the German military command planned to deal with the Jews within a single day.  And so on the 29th of September began the heart-rending movement of Jews to Dorohozhytsk street.

But the Germans had miscalculated, for the arrival of Jews lasted not one day, but three whole days.  For three days the Jews streamed towards the assembly point.  They were, for the most part, old people, with sidelocks, wearing yarmulkes [skullcaps] and long coats [of the sort worn by Jews in Central and Eastern Europe].  They walked spread apart, singly, and also in small groups, carrying their meager belongings or pushing them in baby carriages.  No one patrolled them.  No one hurried them on.  No one accompanied them.  They walked down the streets towards the assembly point specified in the announcements.  The other Kyivans who had remained in the city looked at them and sadly shook their heads.  Some of them spoke contemptuously of the young, healthy Jews who had been evacuated, taking with them all valuable property, and leaving behind these old, infirm parents, grandfathers and grandmothers to take care of their empty apartments.  Finding themselves in such difficult circumstances (in the city there was neither electricity, nor bread, nor water), these old people, not seeing any other way out of their predicament (and, perhaps no other way existed) obediently walked towards the assembly point, and to whatever fate had in store for them there....

Among them happened to be also some younger families.  These were people who had found themselves unable to evacuate.  They were few in number.

How many gathered at the assembly point, I don't know, but during these three days the number was not great, considering that it was primarily the old and the infirm who, on their own, had gathered to walk into the unknown.

I suppose that the Germans were unable to collect much gold and valuables from them, and were not prepared to take care of these old people.  Probably the Germans didn't take them anywhere, but killed them on the spot, as described by I. Erenberg who gathered his information shortly after the events.

Did the "Ukrainian police" help the Germans execute Jews, as Korotych assures us?  No!  He can read to the contrary in I. Erenburg's novel The Storm, and I would like to add that at that time there were no "Ukrainian Police" in Kyiv.  Members of the future "Ukrainian Police" were at that time still soldiers in the Red Army who were breaking through toward the East before they were captured and imprisoned behind barbed wire.

Moreover, the Germans didn't need help, but rather used their own special commandos, which on the order of the Commandant's office and with the help of the military police of Kyiv, in order "not to feed the parasites," were shooting people near Babyn Yar.  There were no mass graves, as such, in that Yar [ravine].  After the liberation of Kyiv from the German occupation it was said that the bodies of the shot victims in the ditches were thinly covered with earth by means of explosions.  And these special German commandos, for whom the execution of old Jews was just one episode, later carried out round-ups, kidnaped hostages, hunted down all whom they regarded as dangerous, delivered them to the Gestapo, tortured them, then shot them at Babyn Yar.

Among those shot were members of the underground and partisans who fell into German hands, hostages swept up in the streets of Kyiv in retaliation for setting fire to the Duma building on Duma Square (today Independence Square) and for explosions and fires on Khreshchatyk Street.

At Babyn Yar were shot sailors of the Dnipro fleet and other prisoners of war.  There, evidently, they killed Ukrainian nationalists on the editorial staff of the newspaper "Ukrains'ke Slovo" [Ukrainian Word], as well as its editor-in-chief, Ivan Rohach.  There they also shot [the Ukrainian poetess] Olena Teliha.  Some believe that she is buried under one of the pillars of the Syrets television tower.  Such was the tragedy of Babyn Yar: tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of people were shot there, mostly Ukrainians.  The percentage of Jews shot at Babyn Yar, in comparison with the victims of other nationalities, is highly insignificant.

This conclusion is supported also by the fact that after the liberation of Kyiv from the German occupiers, the Jewish evacuees began to return, at first singly, and later in an avalanche.  And in such an avalanche that it forced the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, head of the Radnarkom of Ukraine, N. Khrushchev to issue an order temporarily halting the return to Kyiv of the evacuees who had not been explicitly recalled, because in a city devastated and burned down by war there was no place to house them, and those who had stayed behind offered for the time being enough hands to rebuild the city.

But the appearance in Kyiv of [the Jew] L. Kaganovich as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine replacing N. Khrushchev, accelerated the return of the evacuated Jews, even those without any explicit recall instructions.