Babyn yar

A memorial park reminds us about one of the most horrible tragedies of the 20-th century. The name, which is roughly translated as «Ravine of a Women», refers to the proprietress of that ground, the woman, who sold it to the Dominican monastery in 1401. But all that changed on September 29-30, 1941, when 33,771 Jews were executed and their bodies thrown into the ravine by occupying Nazi forces. For the next two years the Nazis continued using the site as a mass killing ground. A total of over 100,000 victims, including partisans and members of the underground but mostly Jews were mur­dered here. As Kyiv's liberation became inevitable, the Nazis tried to burn the evidence of their atrocities, but shortly after the Soviet war crimes commission heard eyewitness accounts from surviving POWs. A large bronze composition with numerous figures of people-Soviet victims in general but not Jews in particular, of A smaller Jewish monument in shape of Jewish symbol Menorah was erected in 1991, and another one remembers children who were killed here. Jewish groups are currently planning to build a museum and peace centre near the site.