What I Learned from My Visit to Babi Yar

 

 

Dr. Ruwan M Jayatunge

I have visited Kyiv several times to meet friends, including Shantha Kulasekara, who is currently involved in a UN project; Bandula Pattiyage, now residing in the UK; and Sisira Gunawardene, who lives in Canada. Regardless of these visits, I have yet to explore Babi Yar (Babyn Yar), a significant historical site where Nazi mobile killing units tragically murdered a total of 33,771 Jewish men, women, and children. Therefore, in 1990, I visited Babi Yar.

Babi Yar is situated in the northwestern region of Kyiv, Ukraine, approximately 5 kilometres from the city center. My visit to this site deepened my understanding of the vastness of the Nazi extermination apparatus, revealing a tragic intersection of dehumanization, ideological indoctrination, conformity, and systemic compartmentalization.

In September 1941, following the Nazi occupation of the city, explosions set by Soviet forces resulted in the deaths of German soldiers. The German command exploited this incident to accuse and target the Jewish community of Kyiv unjustly. Between September 29 and September 30, 1941, Nazi Einsatzgruppen, supported by local collaborators, forcibly marched Jewish men, women, and children to the ravine, where they were compelled to undress and surrender their valuables before being executed. Over these two days, approximately 33,771 individuals were murdered.

The Nazis transformed Babi Yar into a continuous execution ground during their two-year occupation of Kyiv. They murdered an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 total victims at the site.  The Soviet forces liberated Kyiv in late 1943. In a bid to eliminate evidence of their atrocities, the Nazis compelled camp prisoners to exhume and incinerate the bodies in large pyres before their retreat.

The Babi Yar massacre was orchestrated by several key figures, including Paul Blobel, an SS Colonel; Friedrich Jeckeln, who served as the SS and Police Leader for the area; Otto Rasch, the overall commander; and Kurt Eberhard, the German Military Governor of Kyiv. Their collective actions were supported by a local paramilitary force collaborating with Nazi Germany, formed shortly after the city's occupation in September 1941. Comprising 1,400 officers, this unit supported German authorities during the war. Notable figures such as Ivan Kediulych and Oleksandr Kvitko emerged as key military leaders and nationalist organizers, taking on significant roles within the police force. Their leadership was particularly critical during the tragic events of the Babi Yar massacres, where the police aided in the implementation of Nazi killing policies.

The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) supported Nazi forces during the Babyn Yar massacre for several reasons. Primarily, the members of the UAP were ethnic Ukrainians who harboured existing prejudices against Jews, often perceiving them as collaborators or agents of the Soviet regime. Additionally, many individual policemen were driven by the prospect of immediate financial gain, seeking to seize the wealth and possessions of the Jewish victims.

Our local tour guide shared the tormenting tale of Dina Pronicheva, a 25-year-old theatre actress and one of the few survivors of the Babi Yar massacre. Witnessing the execution of her mother and sister, Dina narrowly escaped death by leaping from the ledge just before the gunfire erupted, landing among the bodies in the ravine. In a desperate bid for survival, she lay concealed beneath the weight of the corpses as German soldiers prodded the pile with bayonets, narrowly avoiding detection even when one soldier stepped on her hand. After managing to extricate herself under the cover of night, her ordeal continued when a building cleaner betrayed her location to the authorities. In a cruel twist, police took her two-year-old son hostage, firing near him to force Dina into the open, but a neighbor's bribe ultimately secured the child's release. Dina not only survived the war but also became the sole eyewitness to testify at the 1946 Kyiv war crimes trial.

The perpetrators of the Babi Yar massacre ultimately faced justice for their actions. SS Colonel Paul Blobel was apprehended by Allied forces and subsequently tried by a U.S. military tribunal during the Einsatzgruppen Trial at Nuremberg from 1947 to 1948, where he was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, leading to his execution by hanging at Landsberg Prison in West Germany on June 7, 1951. Friedrich Jeckeln was captured by Soviet troops towards the war's conclusion and was tried by a Soviet military tribunal during the Riga Trial for his significant involvement in orchestrating mass genocides in Ukraine and the Baltic states; he was found guilty and executed by hanging in Riga, Latvia, on February 3, 1946. Kurt Eberhard, the German Military Governor of Kyiv, was arrested by U.S. military authorities in November 1945, but while awaiting trial for his role in the massacre, he took his own life on September 8, 1947, at the age of 72. Otto Rasch, the Overall Commander of Einsatzgruppe C, was also arrested in 1945 and indicted alongside Blobel in the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen Trial; however, his case was separated in early 1948 due to his advanced Parkinson's disease, rendering him unfit for trial, and he passed away from natural causes later that year on November 1, 1948.

Ivan Kediulych, a local collaborator, served as a primary school teacher and the administrator of a village school before the war. His views were heavily influenced by Nazi wartime propaganda, leading him to adopt anti-Semitic beliefs, including the pervasive conspiracy theory of "Judeo-Bolshevism." In the context of the Babyn Yar massacre, Kediulych's involvement was largely administrative and command-oriented. Ivan Kediulych met a tragic end. On August 1, 1945, he was located by the Soviet secret police (NKVD) in a concealed forest bunker close to the village of Lisnyky in the Ternopil region, where he was killed during the confrontation. In contrast, Oleksandr Kvitko chose to defect to the West, where he spent his post-war years in Western Europe, managing to avoid any criminal charges.

Babyn Yar is acknowledged worldwide as one of the most significant mass executions during the Holocaust. In contrast to concentration camps such as Auschwitz, which epitomize the industrialized nature of genocide through gas chambers, Babyn Yar exemplifies the "Holocaust by bullets." Today, it stands as a heart-breaking global emblem of this form of genocide, serving as a central element in Ukraine's efforts to reclaim its historical narrative in the post-Soviet era, while also representing a contemporary struggle against totalitarianism. The site and its associated memories retain profound historical, political, and cultural importance long after the tragic events of 1941.