Days after German forces captured Kyiv, notices ordered all Jews in the city to assemble on September 29, supposedly for resettlement. They were marched to the ravine on the city's edge, stripped of their belongings and clothes and shot in groups by members of Einsatzgruppe C and police battalions. In the following two years, tens of thousands more Jews, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others were killed there. In 1943 the Germans burned the bodies to hide the crime.
German troops entered Kyiv on September 19, 1941. Days later, explosives planted by the retreating Soviets destroyed buildings in the city center that the Germans had occupied, killing many. The occupiers used the blasts as a pretext. Posters in Russian, Ukrainian and German ordered the city's Jews to report by 8 a.m. on Monday, September 29, with documents, money and warm clothing. Those who failed to appear would be shot.
Many expected to be deported. Crowds walked toward the Jewish cemetery near Babi Yar, where they passed through a cordon and were forced to leave their possessions and undress. Then they were driven in groups to the edge of the ravine and shot. The killing went on through the day and the next. An SS report stated that 33,771 Jews had been killed.
The Soviet Union later suppressed the fact that the victims were overwhelmingly Jews. The poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's "Babi Yar" of 1961 began with the line "No monument stands over Babi Yar", and Shostakovich set it in his 13th Symphony. Today a memorial complex marks the site.
Key people: Paul Blobel, Friedrich Jeckeln