On the 81st anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, honored the memory of all the victims of the mass executions of civilians by the Nazis in occupied Kyiv during World War II. The President also honored the memory of the Jews shot by the Nazis in Babyn Yar by putting an icon lamp next to the Menorah memorial sign. Babyn Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. PHOTO: Ukraine President's Office
Babi Yar or Babyn Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first and best documented of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, killing some 33,771 Jews. The decision to murder all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. Sonderkommando 4a as the sub-unit of Einsatzgruppe C, along with the aid of the SD and Order Police battalions with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police backed by the Wehrmacht, carried out the orders. Sonderkommando 4a and the 45th Battalion of the German Order Police conducted the shootings. Servicemen of the 303rd Battalion of the German Order Police at this time guarded the outer perimeter of the execution site. The massacre was the largest mass-murder under the auspices of the Nazi regime and its Ukrainian collaborators during the campaign against the Soviet Union, and it has been called "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust" to that particular date. It is only surpassed overall by the later 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews in October 1941 (committed by German and Romanian troops), and by Aktion Erntefest of November 1943 in occupied Poland with 42,000–43,000 victims. Victims of other massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, communists and Roma. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 people were murdered at Babi Yar during the German occupation.
Size: 8192px × 5468px
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Photo credit: © American Photo Archive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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