Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday marked the 83rd anniversary of the Nazi massacre of more than 30,000 Jews in Babi Yar.
Babi Yar is a ravine outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev, the site of massacres carried out by Nazi forces in World War II. The first massacre took place on 29–30 September 1941, with 33,771 Jews murdered. Other victims of massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, communists, and Romani people. It is estimated that as many as 150,000 people were murdered at Babi Yar during the German occupation.
Zelenskyy said he considers the Baby Yar tragedy “a terrible symbol of the fact that the most horrific crimes occur when the world chooses to ignore, remain silent, be indifferent, and not be determined enough to fight back against evil.”
“On the ‘road of death,’ they drove entire families – men, children, women, and pregnant women – to the ravine. The scale of this evil is still difficult to comprehend,” Zelenskyy said.
According to later reports, Ukrainians were as happy to engage in the massacre of Jews as were the Germans. The order to murder the Jews of Kiev was given to Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion, and a platoon of the No. 9 police battalion. These units were reinforced by police battalions 45 and 303, by units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, and supported by local collaborators.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s note on the commemoration of Babi Yar (or Babyn Yar) was free from any mention of Ukrainian responsibility for the massacres, and utilized the event to hit at the Russians: “Honoring the memory of the victims of Babyn Yar, we call on the world to prevent the repetition of such disasters. More than 80 years since the tragedy of Babyn Yar, we are again witnessing the devastating consequences of the spread of totalitarian ideology, and the systematic violation of generally accepted principles and norms of international law. Atrocities then and now were committed by different regimes and criminals, but they are based on the same hatred of everything human.”
The first monument to the massacres was installed in 1976 and was dedicated to “Soviet citizens, prisoners of war, and officers shot in Babi Yar.” A monument specifically commemorating the Jewish victims, the Menorah, was unveiled in 1991, 50 years after the Babi Yar massacres.
On March 1, 2022, a Russian missile hit a television tower in Kiev and fell in the proximity of Babi Yar. Five civilians were killed, and five injured.
