Category Archives: Babi Yar

Holocaust by Bullets

The photograph above is one of the most well-known photographs of the Holocaust. Yet, it is from a period of the Holocaust which is seldom spoken about.

We mostly hear about the concentration camps and extermination camps. However, prior to the industrialized scale of murder, approximately two million Jews were murdered by bullets.

The summer and autumn of 1941 represented a period of critical escalation. In a matter of months, mobile Nazi killing units, which had begun shooting all adult male Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union, then expanded to include a genocide targeting women, children, and entire Jewish communities.

Many different types of German units perpetrated mass shootings in the territories seized from Soviet forces. The most infamous is the Einsatzgruppen. However, the Einsatzgruppen was composed of 3,000 personnel. They were responsible for a wide variety of tasks, as they were deployed directly behind the entire Eastern front. The other German units included the Order Police battalions, Waffen-SS units, and German military (Wehrmacht) units also perpetrated numerous massacres. However, it wasn’t only Germans who perpetrated the crimes—frequently, they were helped by local collaborators.

I haven’t written many posts on this aspect—simply because I need to have a clear understanding, and it would require me to look at horrific footage and photographs. This does have a physical impact on me. Below is an eyewitness report of Dina Pronicheva, a Ukrainian Jewish actress at the Kyiv Puppet Theatre and a survivor of the Babi Yar massacre.

“A policeman told me to undress and pushed me to the edge of the pit, where a group of people were awaiting their fate. Before the shooting started, I was so scared that I fell into the pit. I fell onto dead bodies. At first, I didn’t understand a thing—where was I? How did I end up there? I thought I was going inside. The shooting went on; people were still falling. I came to my senses—and suddenly I understood everything. I could feel my arms, my legs, my stomach, my head. I wasn’t even injured. I was pretending to be dead. I was on top of dead people – and injured people. I could hear some people breathing; others were moaning in pain. Suddenly, I heard a child screaming, ‘Mum!’ It sounded like my little daughter. I burst into tears.”

Czech-born Viktor Trill was one of the perpetrators in testimonies at Babi Yar, he said the following:
“It is possible that on this day I shot between around 150 and 250 Jews. The whole shooting went off without incident. The Jews were resigned to their fate like lambs. After we got out, first we were issued with alcohol. It was grog or rum. I then saw a gigantic ditch that looked like a dried out river bed. In it were lying several layers of corpses. The execution began first by a few members of our Kommando going down into the ravine. At the same time about 20 Jews were brought along from a connecting path. The Jews had to lay down on the corpses and were then shot in the back of the neck. More Jews were continually brought to be shot.”

Father Patrick Desbois, a French priest, uncovered the truth behind the murder of 1.5-2 million Jews in the occupied Soviet Union by Nazi and Nazi-aligned forces. The book Holocaust by Bullets (published in 2008), detailed Desbois’ journey in locating and studying the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. In the early chapters, Desbois described his grandfather’s story of incarceration, an experience that drove him to study the Holocaust.[2]  The book features a few of the hundreds of testimonies of witnesses or requisitioned villagers present at the mass executions that Desbois has collected with the help of translators, historians, and archival scholars.[3]

This memoir brings to light the emotional impacts of genocide and the intimate, human dimensions of the Nazi extermination.




Sources

https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/VEFBBABIYAR0921

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210929-the-first-major-massacre-in-the-holocaust-by-bullets-babi-yar-80-years-on

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mass-shootings-of-jews-during-the-holocaust

‘Death by bullets’ The Einsatzgruppen and the Soviet Union, 1941-1945

https://www.timesofisrael.com/names-testimonies-of-nazis-in-babi-yar-massacre-released-80-years-on/

Click to access Yahad-In-Unum-The-Holocaust-by-Bullets-Guide.pdf

Babyn Yar

On Tuesday March 1,2022 Russian missiles damaged the Babyn Yar (also known as Babi Yar) memorial site. One might say what is the big deal? It didn’t hit a residential area, right?

Five people were killed in that strike which is an awful loss of life, any death cause by war is. But there is more to this. Babyn Yar has a huge historical importance especially in relation to genocide.

It was the site where over 33,000 people were massacred. In September 1941 by the Nazis.

On September 19, 1941, German forces entered the city of Kyiv (Kiev), the capital of Ukraine. Along with a large part of German-occupied Ukraine, the city was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine which had been established on September 1 with Erich Koch as administrator.

Before the German invasion, some 160,000 Jews resided in Kyiv,Ukraine . Which was approximately 20 percent of the total population of the capital. Following the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, approximately 100,000 Jews fled Kyiv or were already serving in the Soviet military. By the time the Germans occupied Kyiv, there were about 60,000 Jews remaining in the city. Most of those who remained had been unable or unwilling to flee earlier. This included mostly women, children, the elderly, and those who were ill.

The implementation of the order was entrusted to Sonderkommando 4a, commanded by Blobel, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln.This unit consisted of SD and Sipo, the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion, and a platoon of the 9th Police Battalion. Police Battalion 45, commanded by Major Besser, conducted the massacre, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion. Contrary to the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht”, the Sixth Army under Walter von Reichenau worked together with the SS and SD to plan the mass murder of the Jews of Kiev.

On 29 and 30 September 1941, a special team of German SS troops supported by other German units and local collaborators murdered 33,771 Jewish civilians after taking them to the ravine.

The commander of the Einsatzkommando reported two days later:

“The difficulties resulting from such a large scale action—in particular concerning the seizure—were overcome in Kiev by requesting the Jewish population through wall posters to move. Although only a participation of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Jews had been expected at first, more than 30,000 Jews arrived who, until the very moment of their execution, still believed in their resettlement, thanks to an extremely clever organization.”

According to the testimony of a truck driver named Hofer, victims were ordered to undress and were beaten if they resisted.

The crowd was large enough that most of the victims could not have known what was happening until it was too late; by the time they heard the machine gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot.

In the evening, the Germans undermined the wall of the ravine and buried the people under the thick layers of earth.According to the Einsatzgruppe’s Operational Situation Report, 33,771 Jews from Kiev and its suburbs were systematically shot dead by machine-gun fire at Babi Yar on 29 September and 30 September 1941.

The money, valuables, underwear and clothing of the murdered victims were turned over to the local ethnic Germans and to the Nazi administration of the city.Wounded victims were buried alive in the ravine along with the rest of the bodies.

The ravine at Babyn Yar was a killing site for two years after the September 1941 massacre. There, Germans stationed at Kyiv murdered tens of thousands of people, both Jews and non-Jews. Other groups of people who were killed at Babyn Yar included: patients from a local psychiatric hospital, Roma , Soviet prisoners of war, and civilians.

It is estimated that some 100,000 people, Jews and non-Jews, were murdered at Babi Yar

The killings at the Babyn Yar ravine continued until the fall of 1943, only a few days before the Soviets re-took control of Kyiv on November 6.

Putin invaded Ukraine under the premise that he wanted to rid the country from Neo Nazis. Yet the Ukrainian President is Jewish.

A spokesperson for the memorial told the Times of Israel that the air strike had caused damage to buildings in the Jewish cemetery located in the Babyn Yar complex, although a monument to the victims of Nazism was not affected. It may not have caused damage but it did desecrate the site and the surrounding Jewish cemeteries. If that isn’t an act by Neo Nazis then what is?

Putin’s logic appears to be to get rid of ‘Neo Nazis’ by committing acts of Neo Nazism himself.

sources

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/01/ukraine-holocaust-babi-yar/6979800001/

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/03/02/russian-missile-strike-babyn-yar-holocaust-memorial-centre-kyiv

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60588885

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kiev-and-babi-yar

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/01/ukraine-russia-babyn-yar/

Babi Yar-destroying the evidence

Babi Yar

I had planned to do a blog on the horrors of Babi Yar, but I decided against it. Firstly because there is not one word I could write which best describes the depravities committed by the Nazis,both German and Ukrainian.

(Notice dated September 28, 1941 in Russian, Ukrainian with German translation ordering all Kievan Jews to assemble for supposed resettlement)

Notice

Secondly there are so many comprehensive  records and documentaries about it , and I just couldn’t do justice to any of them.

I will keep this blog short and focus on those tasked to destroy the evidence of the atrocities.

Sonderaktion 1005 consisted of Jewish inmates tasked to exhume the bodies of the Babi Yar massacres and burn the remains and scatter the ashes on farms nearby.

Before the Germans retreated from Kiev, they attempted to hide the atrocities they had committed at Babi Yar. Members od Sonderaktion 1005 who were inmates at Syrets concentration camp decided enough is enough and staged a revolt.

Syrets

A number  of prisoners, who had been involved in the exhumations, secretly armed themselves with tools and bits of metal they found and conceal. They picked locks with keys they had found on the exhumed bodies..

The best way to describe the emotional and physical state of mind of these men is in a quote from historian Reuben Ainsztein.

“in those half-naked men who reeked of putrefying flesh, whose bodies were eaten by scabies and covered with a layer of mud and soot, and of whose physical strength so little remained, there survived a spirit that defied everything that the Nazis’ New Order had done or could do to them. In the men whom the SS men saw only as walking corpses, there matured a determination that at least one of them must survive to tell the world about what happened in Babi Yar.”

On the night of September 29, 1943, while  the camp was being dismantled, the inmate revolt broke out.  Prisoners overpowered the guards using the tools and scraps of metal they found and their bare hands. Fifteen people managed to escape.

One of the escapees,Vladimir Davіdov, was a witness at the Nuremberg trials.

I know there are people who condemn the actions of the Sonderaktiions, or Sonder kommandos, they say they were traitors and collaborators, But the people who condemn them are usually people who never had to face a situation where you had to choose between life and death. For that is the choice these men had, life or death. Work for us and live or die by execution or in the gas chambers.

If I had been put in that situation, I more then likely would have done the same. At least they lived to tell the stories and provide evidence.

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What did you see when you shot me?

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What did you see when shot me?

Did you see a threat to your life?

Did you see a Monster?

Did you see someone who insulted your mother or wife?

Did you see a sadistic murderer?

Did you feel like a hero when you pulled that trigger?

Did you feel good when you saw my blood?

Or did you know that you are nothing more then a pathetic coward?

What did you see when shot me?

Larochka Ratmanski was only 4 when she was brutally killed during the Babi yar massacre

The Syrets concentration camp revolt- When enough was enough.

Syrets_(Syretskij_concentration_camp)_Kiev

Before the Nazis retreated from Kiev, they attempted to conceal the many atrocities they had committed at Babi Yar. Paul Blobel, who was in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the Sonderaktion 1005 in eliminating its traces.

Members_of_a_Sonderkommando_1005_unit_pose_next_to_a_bone_crushing_machine_in_the_Janowska_concentration_camp

For six weeks from August to September 1943, more than 300 chained prisoners were forced to exhume and burn the corpses (using local headstones as bricks to build ovens) and scattered the ashes on farmland in the vicinity (to this day many Ukrainians will not eat cabbage grown on those farms

During the Sonderkommando 1005 exhumations, a group of prisoners secretly armed themselves with tools and scraps of metal they managed to find and conceal. They picked locks with keys they found on victims’ bodies.

Historian Reuben Ainsztein said about these men.

“in those half-naked men who reeked of putrefying flesh, whose bodies were eaten by scabies and covered with a layer of mud and soot, and of whose physical strength so little remained, there survived a spirit that defied everything that the Nazis’ New Order had done or could do to them. In the men whom the SS men saw only as walking corpses, there matured a determination that at least one of them must survive to tell the world about what happened in Babi Yar”

Babi Yar-14

On the night of September 29, 1943, as the camp was being dismantled, an inmate revolt broke out. The prisoners overpowered the guards using their bare hands, hammers and screw drivers. Fifteen people managed to escape. Among them was Vladimir Davіdov, who later served as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials. Among other escapees were Fyodor Zavertanny, Jacob Kaper, Filip Vilkis, Leonid Kharash, I. Brodskiy, Leonid Kadomskiy, David Budnik, Fyodor Yershov, Jakov Steiuk, Semyon Berland, Vladimir Kotlyar.Once Nazi control was re-established in the camp, the remaining 311 inmates were executed.

On December 6, 1943, Soviet authorities took a press party of Western journalists to the site of the Babi Yar massacres. Two of them, Bill Downs and Bill Lawrence, interviewed three Syrets-held Jewish prisoners of war who had been forced to participate in the mass disposal of bodies:

Efim Vilkis, Leonid Ostrovsky, and Vladimir Davidoff. Downs described Vilkis’ account of the prisoner escape:

However, even more incredible was the actions taken by the Nazis between August 19 and September 28 last. Vilkis said that in the middle of August the SS mobilized a party of 100 Russian war prisoners, who were taken to the ravines. On Aug. 19 these men were ordered to disinter all the bodies in the ravine. The Germans meanwhile took a party to a nearby Jewish cemetery whence marble headstones were brought to Babii Yar to form the foundation of a huge funeral pyre. Atop the stones were piled a layer of wood and then a layer of bodies, and so on until the pyre was as high as a two-story house. Vilkis said that approximately 1,500 bodies were burned in each operation of the furnace and each funeral pyre took two nights and one day to burn completely. The cremation went on for 40 days, and then the prisoners, who by this time included 341 men, were ordered to build another furnace. Since this was the last furnace and there were no more bodies, the prisoners decided it was for them. They made a break but only a dozen out of more than 200 survived the bullets of the Nazi Tommy guns.

According to Vilkis, some of the prisoners grew ill or went mad from the experience, and Nazi soldiers killed them as a warning to the rest. Three to five prisoners were shot each day.

When the Red Army took control of the city of Kiev on November 6, 1943, the Syrets Concentration Camp was converted into a Soviet camp for German POWs and operated until 1946.

pow

The camp was subsequently demolished and in the 1950s and 1960s urban development began in the area, which included an apartment complex and a park. The construction of a dam nearby also saw the ravine filled with industrial pulp.