UKRAINE: Ukraine remembers one of World War Two's most notorious massacres, the Babiy Yar massacre

This week, Ukraine marks the anniversary of one of World War Two's most notorious wartime massacres, analysing a key stage in Nazi Germany's plan to kill off European Jewry, and reflecting on persistent anti-Semitism. The ex-Soviet state is holding events to honour more than 33,000 victims shot and tossed into pits over two days in September 1941 in Babiy Yar, a ravine now in the Kiev suburbs. The focal point will be a forum on Wednesday (September 27), hosted by President Viktor Yushchenko, on the Nazi "final solution" and its ramifications today, especially in post-Soviet society. Kiev's 150,000-strong Jewish community, swollen by refugees, was summoned to a gathering point on September 29, 10 days after the Nazis rolled practically unhindered into the city. Jews in Ukraine and Russia were long used to pogroms under the tsar. Living in a closed society and all but ignorant of the Nazis' anti-Jewish policies, most carried prized possessions on the mistaken notion that the Germans would resettle them. "What was going on there was awful. They were beating people wherever they could. My grandmother was going mad. She was holding her passport in one arm, with me underneath. With her other hand, she was constantly crossing herself and kept shouting 'I'm Russian, I'm Russian". said Raisa Maistrenko, three at the time and half-Jewish and now one of a handful of survivors still alive. "A local policeman said everyone there was Jewish. He tried to hit me with his rifle butt. My grandmother protected me with her shoulder and we fell to the ground together....then she had gone completely mad by this time and kept crossing herself. And I was holding on to her. Then he threw her into the crowd. People made way for us and we ended at the end of long line. And then my grandmother started to run." she added. Maistrenko, who later danced in an ensemble for 22 years, fled in the confusion with her grandmother to a cemetery, hid in in bushes through the night before stumbling home after dawn. Jewish leaders see Babiy Yar as a starting point -- meant to test European public opinion before pushing ahead with the network of a half dozen death camps in neighbouring Poland set up to kill Jews brought in by train from across the continent. "The Nazis checked the level of tolerance to their own intolerance in Europe. And the tolerance of the common Europe, the average Europe, was very high." said Moshe Kantor, chairman of the board of governors of the European Jewish Congress. "That's why, moving step by step after Kristallnacht to Babiy Yar, they checked the tolerance of German people. Starting from Babiy Yar, they checked the tolerance of Europe. And from the conference at Wannsee and the last stage of the holocaust, which was finalised in Auschwitz, they checked the tolerance of the world. And step by step they became surer that the world would be tolerant to their intolerance." Historians said the choice of Kiev as a killing ground was logical for the Nazis as their troops swept towards Moscow, Leningrad and the war's big turning point at Stalingrad. No one knows how many died in Babiy Yar over the next two years, with estimates ranging from 100,000 to 200,000. Later victims including Gypsies, partisans and underground fighters. As Red Army troops advanced westward after Stalingrad, the Nazis unearthed and burned bodies and carted off archives. After victory in 1945, Babiy Yar's impact was diminished under the Kremlin's blatant anti-Semitic policies under Josef Stalin, and then his successors. No monument stood at the site until the mid-1970s, when a grandiose sculpture commemorated "Soviet civilians", with no specific reference to Jews. Only under Mikhail Gorbachev's "perestroika" reforms of the late 1980s that the extent of the Jewish tragedy was raised. A menorah was erected in the first years of post-Soviet rule. With anti-Semitic incidents regular occurrences in ex-Soviet states, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin bowed his head and admitted his shame at the last holocaust forum marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp last year. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, whose father was a forced labourer at Auschwitz, vowed then to help stamp out anti-Semitism. "Babiy Yar must become a forewarning which should protect the world and alerted to aggressive, bloody xenophobia" said Yushchenko speaking at the opening of an exhibition to mark the tragedy at Babiy Yar.

ITN Source | September 27, 2006

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