renounced Judaism and had become a Lutheran.
His Jewish background worked well for the Nazi
goal of attacking Communism, which became
indelibly associated with Jewish thought and Jew-
ish Bolshevism and was thus seen as part of the
Jewish conspiracy to destroy Germany. Hitler
emphasized this purported Jewish Communist
conspiracy in speeches that were designed to cre-
ate more support for his planned invasion of the
Soviet Union. Hitler claimed that Moscow and
the Communists would invade Germany. Hitler
also pointed out that the reason that the Soviets
had become Communists was because they were
Slavs, a peasant group with no real culture or
sophistication. Hitler thought that an invasion
of the Soviet Union would be easily accomplished
and that the rich fertile lands of the Soviet Union
would quickly become available for German
expansion. The German invasion of the Soviet
Union, labeled Operation Barbarossa, began in
June 1941. It is estimated that more than 20 mil-
lion Soviets died before the Germans were driven
out of the Soviet Union, after Hitler’s army was
defeated in Leningrad in January 1944.
The Massacre at Babi Yar
Before the city of Kiev fell into German hands in
September 1941, there were an estimated 175,000
Jewish citizens among the nearly 875,000 resi-
dents. When the threat of invasion became cer-
tain, the Soviets evacuated factory workers,
whom the Soviets considered important to the
war effort; among these factory workers were an
estimated 20,000–30,000 Jews. The remaining
Jewish population was captured by the German
army when they invaded. Although some Jews
were killed during the initial invasion, there was
no organized action directed against the Jewish
population. Then on September 24, several
bombs were detonated in the city, destroying
buildings occupied by the German army and kill-
ing hundreds of German soldiers and officers.
The bombs had been placed by Soviet partisans,
but the blame was placed on the Jewish popula-
tion. Several German military commanders sta-
tioned in that area quickly decided that all Jews in
Kiev must be killed as punishment for the sabo-
tage. The large ravine at Babi Yar was chosen as
the location, and on September 28, 1941, an order
was issued compelling all Jews in Kiev to assem-
ble at the designated location on September 29 at
8 a.m. The date was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day
of Atonement. The Jewish population was told to
bring all valuables and warm clothing, since they
were to be relocated to labor camps. The order
stipulated that any Jews not complying would be
shot immediately.
Thousands of Jews complied with the orders
and assembled as directed. They were marched
in groups of one hundred to a Jewish cemetery
near the ravine at Babi Yar. The area was cor-
doned off with barbed wire. The people were
ordered to undress and leave their belongings
neatly sorted and stacked. Many were then
beaten with sticks as they awaited their fate.
The people were taken in groups of ten to the
ravine, where they were ordered to march to the
bottom and lie down, often on top of those who
had already been killed. They were then shot.
The remaining Jews watched their family and
neighbors being shot but were unable to escape,
since the barbed wire enclosure was heavily
guarded. There was not enough ammunition to
kill everyone separately, and so in some cases
two people were placed together and killed by
one bullet. Many small children were thrown in
the ravine alive and buried under all of the
bodies. The massacre took two days, and by
the end of the second day more than 33,700
Jews had been killed. The killing of Kiev’s Jews
did not end on the second day, however, as this
first wave of killings continued at least until
October 3, 1941. It is estimated that over the
next several months more than 100,000 and per-
haps as many as 200,000 people were killed at
Babi Yar before the Soviets liberated the area in- The number of dead included nearly all of
the remaining Jews of Kiev as well as Gypsies,
Communists, Ukrainian civilians, and Soviet
prisoners of war. A few Jews survived because
they were hidden by their non-Jewish neighbors,
and a very few survived the killings because the
bullets missed them or because they fell into the
ravine just before the shot was fired. These few
survivors provided witness testimony to the
events that occurred at Babi Yar.
Memorials at Babi Yar
Several efforts were made to clean up the massa-
cre site at Babi Yar. Before leaving Kiev, the
German army tried to eradicate any evidence of
what they had done; thus, they burned as many
corpses as possible before their retreat in 1943.
After the war ended, the Soviets burned many of
the remaining corpses as well. In the early 1950s
a dam was built in that area, and the ravine was
flooded. After the dam failed, the ravine was
used as a garbage dump. Eventually a park andBabii Yar