As Jews and other Holocaust victims mark 70 years since the first massacre at Babi Yar, SBS looks back at the ravine's dark history.
Where is Babi Yar?
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukraine capital of Kiev, where a series of mass executions took place, including the single biggest massacre of the Holocaust.
On 29 September and 30 September, 1941, Nazi soldiers marched almost 34,000 Jews to the edge of the ravine and systematically executed them with machine guns.
Why did it happen?
Shortly after the Germans captured Kiev on September 19, 1941, a series of guerrilla attacks were carried out on buildings they had occupied.
Between September 24 and 28, a number of these buildings were blown up, killing Germans as well as locals.
In retaliation, military officials ordered the Jews of Kiev be killed. After the war however, it emerged that the guerrilla operations were led by the Soviet security police, NKVD, by a detachment left behind in the city for that purpose.
The main massacre
On September 28, notices were posted in the city ordering all Jews to assemble on the streets of Kiev so that their resettlement to new locations could be arranged.
Masses of people reported to the appointed spot the following morning.
They were taken to a Jewish cemetery near the Babi Yar ravine, where they were stripped of any valuables, and told to take off their clothes and lie face down on the ground.
They were then shot by SS troops and Ukrainian police. According to official reports of the Einsatzgruppe, the two-day mass executions saw 33,771 Jews slaughtered.
The months that followed
After the initial massacre, thousands of other Jews were seized and taken to Babi Yar.
The site was converted into a permanent camp, known as Syrets, where thousands of victims from other parts of the Ukraine were sent for extermination. They included gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war as well as Jews.
Prisoners who were carpenters, shoemakers and other skilled workers were 'quartered' at the camp to serve the needs of the SS men and Ukrainian guards, but they were usually killed within a few weeks and replaced by others who continued their duties.
According to a Soviet research commission on Nazi crimes, approximately 100,000 individuals were murdered at Babi Yar.
Attempts to destroy evidence
In 1943, the German military sought to erase evidence of the Babi Yar massacres because of the looming threat of the Red Army. Special units were formed to exhume the corpses and cremate them, but the gruesome job itself was carried out by inmates from the concentration camp of Syretsk.
The mass graves were opened up by bulldozers and prisoners were forced to drag the corpses to cremation pyres. It took six weeks to ensure no trace was left of them.
Eye witness account
"Naked Jews were led to a ravine about 150 metres long, 30 metres wide and 15 metres deep. The Jews went down into the ravine through two or three narrow paths. When they got closer to the edge of the ravine, members of the Schutzpolizei grabbed them and made them lie down over the corpses of the Jews who had already been shot.
"It took no time. The corpses were carefully laid down in rows. As soon as a Jew lay down, a Schutzpolizist came along with a sub-machine gun and shot him in the back of the head. The Jews who descended into the ravine were so frightened by this terrible scene that they completely lost their will. You could even see some of them lying down in the row on their own and waiting for the shot to come." - Testimony of Fritz Hoefer, eye witness to the murders. (Source: Holocaust Research Project)
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