In late September 1941, SS and German police units and their auxiliaries perpetrated one of the largest massacres of World War II. It took place at a ravine called Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) just outside the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv.
Babyn Yar in Kyiv was the site of one of the largest mass shootings of Jews in German-occupied Europe. It occurred on September 29?30, 1941.
Germans continued to perpetrate mass murders at this killing site until just before the Soviets re-took control of Kyiv in 1943. During this period, Germans shot Jews, as well as Roma, Ukrainian civilians, and Soviet POWs.
In the decades after the war, Babyn Yar symbolized the struggle over the memory of World War II and the Holocaust in the Soviet Union.
On September 19, 1941, German forces entered the city of Kyiv (Kiev), the capital of Ukraine. Along with a large part of German-occupied Ukraine, the city was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine which had been established on September 1 with Erich Koch as administrator (Reichskommissar).
Please Share This Page:
