The Babi Yar Tragedy = Holocaust

Menorah memorial. Babi Yar. Kiev. Photo by the author.

 I am not a Jew, but I grew up in Ukraine, one of the main countries where the Holocaust occurred. The words “genocide” and “Holocaust” are not abstract notions for me, but related to the real areas where people were massacred. The bloodiest shooting massacre of the Holocaust took place on the outskirts of my native city, Kyiv. Over the course of two days in late September 1941, more than 33,000 innocent Jewish men, women, children and elderly were murdered in the ravine named Babi Yar.

Holocaust… What a terrible word! It sounds like a blow of a stick, the stick that German soldiers used to force trembling Jews, stripped of all clothing, to the edge of the ravine. Doomed to die, some people began laughing hysterically; others’ hair turned grey in minutes; and mothers embraced their babies, trying to protect them. Helicopters flew over Babi Yar to muffle the sounds of cries, laments and the unrelenting gunfire coming from the slaughter site. Hell on the Earth … 

There were not many survivors of the Babi Yar tragedy. Each story is a unique example of courage and superhuman efforts that helped those few to go through the inferno of that brutal massacre to tell people the truth about it.

The writer Anatoli Kuznetsov in his book Babi Yar depicts destiny of Dina Pronicheva, who was one of those ordered to march to the ravine, forced to undress and then shot. Badly wounded, she pretended to be dead in a pile of corpses, and eventually managed to escape. Anatoli Kuznetsov describes her horrifying experience:

“All around and beneath her she could hear strange submerged sounds, groaning, choking and sobbing. … The whole mass of bodies was pressed tighter by the movements of the ones who were still living. … Some soldiers came out onto the ledge and flashed their torches down on the bodies, firing bullets from their revolvers into any which appeared to be still living. …Then she heard people walking near her, actually on the bodies. … One SS man caught his foot against Dina and her appearance aroused his suspicions. … But she hung limp and gave no signs of life. He kicked her in the breast with his heavy boot and trod on the right hand so that the bones cracked, but he didn’t use his gun and went off .”

Alla Gerber, publicist and President of the Holocaust foundation in Moscow, once said, “The Holocaust is a Jewish tragedy, but not a Jewish problem. This is a problem of all humankind. This is the problem of genocide and hatred based on different characteristics like ethnicity and race”.

I believe that the generation born at the end of the 20th century cannot remain silent. We are responsible for bringing the truth about the Holocaust to the next generations. The main priority of this mission is to preserve the memory of Holocaust victims and enlighten young people how to recognize genocide to prevent Holocaust.

Monument to children killed at Babi Yar. Kiev. Photo by the author.

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