History of Sorts

The photograph above is a portrait of five-year-old Mania Halef, a Jewish child murdered during the mass murder at Babi Yar. On September 29 and 30, the Germans stationed at Kyiv slaughtered 33,000 men, women, and children at Babi Yar—a two-day mass murder spree. If you take the total 48 hours, it is 172,800 seconds; when you divide that by 33,000, you get 5.2 seconds. However, in reality, it was a shorter period, so the average killing time per person would have even been shorter.

Babi Yar

Beneath the sky where ravens fly,
And autumn winds begin to cry,
A ravine became a tomb of night,
As Babi Yar gave way to fright.

The trees, they whispered sorrow’s name,
As death descended, cold and tame,
No monument, no stone to mark
The terror that would seize the dark.

In silent lines, the people came,
No banners waved, no call for fame.
The children clung to mothers’ hands,
As shadows spread across the land.

And shots rang out in waves of steel,
The earth would crack, the sky would kneel.
Two days—33,000 gone—
A city’s breath reduced to none.

The wind has howled a thousand years,
It carries still those endless tears.
The blood that soaked the soil deep
In Babi Yar, where angels weep.

No graves were dug, no names were called,
No justice rang, no shame appalled.
Yet silence speaks of every scar,
Of every soul lost in Babi Yar.

And though the years may try to fade,
The echoes of their steps remain,
In every leaf, in every star—
The memory burns in Babi Yar.

Source

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/five-year-old-mania-halef