Kyiv holds March of Remembrance to commemorate Babyn Yar tragedy

The annual March of Remembrance on the anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy took place in the capital for the eighth time.

Ukrinform reports, quoted by Rubryka.

The participants gathered near the Lukyanivska metro station, in the park opposite the Kyivska Rus cinema. From there, the column went to the Menorah monument in the Babyn Yar National Historical and Memorial Reserve, repeating the same route the Jews followed in 1941.

"We always gather in the same place. Three columns of people, who in 1941 went on to Babyn Yar, converged here. According to our information, they gathered here. Our goal is to walk this route. At this time, when we are going, we can reason, we can imagine how they went, experience it all," noted Yevhen Horodetskyi, one of the event's initiators, philanthropist, and writer.

About two hundred people joined the march, including representatives of the Jewish community, relatives of eyewitnesses to the events in Babyn Yar, and representatives of diplomatic institutions. Law enforcement officers accompanied the column.

Photo: RFE/RLA memorial prayer was held near the Menorah. Participants lit lamps and placed flowers and stones at the monument.

"This is our memory, and today, it is even more important than it was before the start of the full-scale invasion. The same tragedy that happened in 1941 in Babyn Yar is happening in our present. I believe that we should pass on the memory of this tradition further so that our children and grandchildren go not only to Babyn Yar or to the thousands of shooting sites during World War II but also to Bucha, Irpin, and Bakhmut. So that the memory of these tragedies is passed on and people do not forget it," Horodetskyi emphasized.

Reference

We will remind you that today is the Day of Remembrance of the Babyn Yar tragedy — one of the most terrible symbols of the Holocaust.

In 1941, for two days, on September 29 and 30, the first mass shooting of unarmed civilians was carried out in Kyiv, occupied by the Nazis, Ukrinform reports.

In general, from September 29 to October 11, 1941, the SS, a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, killed almost the entire Jewish population of the city — more than 50 thousand men, women, and children. Almost 34,000 people were killed in the first two days alone. On October 1, 2, 8, and 11, about 17,000 more people were shot.

The place of mass shootings was chosen to be Babyn Yar — a ravine in the northwest of Kyiv, two and a half kilometers long, the depth of which in places reached 50 meters. A gate was set up at the end of the street, through which people were allowed to pass in groups of 30 to 40 people. First, they were forced to undress, their personal belongings were taken, and then the police drove the victims to the passages in the embankments at the ravine's edge. Machine gunners sat on the opposite side. After the ditch was filled with two to three layers of bodies of the shot, they were sprinkled with earth on top.

In general, during the years of World War II, according to various estimates, 100 to 150 thousand people were killed in Babyny Yar — Jews, Roma, Karaites, Soviet prisoners of war, participants of the Ukrainian nationalist resistance movement, patients of a psychiatric clinic and representatives of other national or social groups that the occupiers considered redundant.

As Rubryka reported, on the 82nd anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, honored the memory of the victims of mass shootings of civilians by the Nazis in occupied Kyiv during World War II.