O Babi Yar Massacre is considered the largest extermination committed throughout the Second World War. During this massacre, carried out on September 29 and 30, 1941, the Nazis carried out the shooting of more than 33,000 Jews in just over 36 hours. This episode took place in Kiev during the first weeks of the Nazi occupation of the Ukrainian city. The Babi Yar Massacre is one of the symbols of the extent and cruelty of the crimes committed by the Nazis.
Context
The Babi Yar massacre took place during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, which began in June 1941 with the Operation Barbarossa. In this operation, 3.6 million German soldiers crossed the Soviet border and started the bloodiest phase of World War II.
Operation Barbarossa put into practice the main objectives of Adolf Hitler's ideology, for from it he hoped to dominate the Soviet Union in a few weeks and then eradicate Soviet Bolshevism. As a second objective was the creation of his Reich through the idea of the lebensraum, O "
living space” German, which consisted in the formation of an empire in which the Germans would enslave the Slavs.This operation was organized on three fronts and each group had a primary objective:
Leningrad (north);
Moscow (center);
Kiev (south).
From these achievements, Hitler hoped to overthrow the government of stThelin and, with the defeat of the Soviet Union, to achieve its victory in the war. Operation Barbarossa, however, did not turn out as the Nazi leader had hoped. The expected quick victory over the Soviets did not come, and the Germans had to prepare for the long conflict that awaited them in the Soviet Union.
Einsatzgruppen
The Babi Yar Massacre was carried out by the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi death squads. The creation of these groups had taken place in 1938, during the annexation of Austria. From 1939 onwards, the grouping was placed under the control of Reinhard Heydrich, who considerably expanded the role of the extermination groups.
The massacre in Kiev was included in the program Final Solution proposed by ReinhardHeydrich and HeinrichHimmler, which sought the total extermination of the Jews of Europe. Adolf Hitler had postponed this genocide project to the end of the war, but Heydrich and Himmler convinced him to carry out the plan during the war.
So, with Hitler's permission, Himmler and Heydrich passed the order throughout Eastern Europe that all Jews (men, women and children) be killed. At first, the Final Solution program would be put into practice from the shootings performed by Einsatzgruppen. The extermination groups were assisted by members of the Schutzstaffel (SS), of the Wehrmacht and from many collaborators from the places they conquered (as happened in Babi Yar in Ukraine).
There was the performance of the Einsatzgruppen throughout Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. In the case of the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, the responsible group was the Einsatzgruppen Ç.
Babi Yar Massacre
Before the Nazi invasion, Kiev was known for its large population of Jewish origin. It is estimated that about 20% of the city was Jewish, which corresponds to approximately 200 thousand inhabitants. Just before the Nazis conquered the Ukrainian city, about 70% of that population of Jewish origin managed to flee. The Jews who remained in the city were those who did not have the financial or health conditions to flee.
The city of Kiev was officially conquered on September 19, 1941 by Army Group South. A few days later, on the 24th, some bombs installed in buildings occupied by the Nazis exploded, causing the death of dozens of Germans. The bombs, which had been installed by the Soviet secret police (NKVD), were used as a pretext by the Nazis to exterminate Jews from the Ukrainian city.
On the 26th, the Nazis decided in a meeting to carry out a massive massacre of Jews in retaliation for the bombs. So the next day, the Germans spread the following warning across Kiev:
“All Jews residing in Kiev and its vicinity are ordered to appear at the corner of Melnyk and Dokterivsky, 8 am on Monday, September 29, 1941, carrying documents, money, underwear, etc. Those who do not attend will be shot. Those who enter houses evacuated by Jews and steal belongings from these houses will be shot”.|1|
The Nazis expected them to appear around seven thousand people, but the number of Jews was much higher: more than 33 thousand people attended in the defined place. The Jews believed that a “resettlement” would be carried out, an expression used by the Nazis to define the transfer of Jews to ghettos or concentration and extermination camps.
What happened next was a shooting of gigantic proportions. With the help of the SS, the Wehrmacht and from Ukrainian collaborators, the Nazis systematically shot almost every Jew who attended. There were very few survivors. The following is a Russian citizen's account of this incident, according to historian Antony Beevor: “People were separated, men on one side, women and children on the other. They were naked (they had left their belongings elsewhere), and were mown down by submachine guns; the sound of gunfire drowned out their screams and wails"|2|.
Historian Timothy Snyder brings the report of a Jewish survivor named Dina Pronicheva:
Having turned in their valuables and documents, people were forced to undress completely. They were then led under threats and gunfire into the air in groups of about ten people to the edge of a ravine known as Babi Yar. Many were beaten […]. They [the people] had to lie face down on the corpses already piled up under them and wait for the shots that would come from above and from behind. Then it was time for a new group|3|.
After 36 hours, the Germans executed a total of 33,761 people. Later, as they could no longer contain the advances of the Soviet armies, the Nazis exhumed the bodies to try to hide all evidence of the genocide committed in Kiev. After the war, the Babi Yar Massacre was not recognized by the Soviet government and was considered only a “crime against the Soviet people”. Recognition only took place after Ukraine's declaration of independence in 1991. Today, at the site, there is a memorial in honor of the victims of Babi Yar.
|1| The Babi Yar Massacre. Available on here.
|2| BEEVOR, Antony. The Second World War. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2015, p. 246.
|3| SNYDER, Timothy. Lands among blood: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2012, p. 252-253.
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/massacre-babi-yar-exterminio-dos-judeus-kiev.htm
