Babi Yar in Kiev
29th of the month September 1941 moved to the side Lukyanovka thousands of Kiev. They were laden with things with wallets ..... in the hands, with their suitcases, with knots. Carried grudnikov, were very small hands, rolled to a wheelchair with a non-ambulant elderly. The procession, consisting of hundreds of streams and poured into a huge bubbling stream, splash into the street, Artema accompanied by hundreds of people. Somebody saw off neighbors, someone just came out to stare at unprecedented "exodus."We dare not forget that cry. This is not
History. This is today. And what about tomorrow?
Anatoly Kuznetsov, "Babi Yar"
September 29, 1941
According to the recollections of my relatives who survived the occupation of Kiev, the vast majority of people were tuned to the Jews favorably. In Kiev in general has always, until very recently, was a lively notion of "good neighborliness". Metropolis here and did not smell.
September 29, 1941 spiteful hiss in the style of "the Jews were lucky - take out" lost in the general stream of goodbyes, really warm hugs and phrases.
The human stream of moving to the intersection of streets Melnikov and Pugachev. Here people met tommy and back no one was released.
Streets and Dorogozhytska dirt road (now - street Korotchenko) were blocked by the Nazis with dogs. People were driven in groups of 500 people, then crushed into smaller "party" took away clothes and food. Many people have realized what was happening. But still could not believe it.
According to the recollections passed through the horror of Babi Yar, that was supposed to happen in the heads did not fit. Until recently, people did not believe, even when they were run through a gauntlet, even when they were beaten by the Germans laughing. Even when stripped them, and a few meters of machinegun fire were heard. Even then I could not believe. To kill such a huge mass of people? Destroy the children, women, old people? Why? Yes, this can not be!
The fact that the genocide of the Jewish people, carried out by Hitler, the Soviet press silenced. Hitler was a friend, trusted friend, not a monster, ready to destroy hundreds of thousands of people out there for some ideas. Many remembered the 18th year that the occupants were polite courteous and nice to the locals. But in the 41st year in Kiev joined other Germans ...
Apocalypse
Memories of those who survived, went around all the media around the world. Here is the testimony of people who saw the ad:
"At the end of the cemetery people drove right along the Babi Yar, where he was built like a corridor of the gunners, and all unwittingly fell on a large flat area. Who tried to escape to the side of the severely beaten with sticks and set dogs. People were beaten without any reason. We always had to evade attacks ...
At the edge of the site were elevation, and between them the narrow passages leading into the ravines, in which the Nazis destroyed the civilians. On this site the Nazis tore off clothes and half-naked men were driven to the place of execution. People rushed from one place to another, like mad, shouting, and the doomed gun fire merged into a continuous roar. "
"Doomed ordered ... add up all their belongings in a heap. People stood in columns of a hundred people ... From the cemetery lodge was clearly seen as the first convoy stopped at the cliff as people stripped naked, like in the neatly folded piles of clothing, a shot from rifles and machine guns on the brink, like grabbing women, children raised by their feet and threw them into the Babi Yar. "
Here are memories of the Germans:
"Immediately after my arrival at the place of execution, I, along with other friends had to go down into this ravine. It did not last long, and soon we were on the slopes of the ravine are the first Jews. The Jews had to go face to the ground near the walls of the ravine.
In the ravine there were three groups of riflemen, a total of about 12 shooters. These teams both shot from the top all the time summed Jews. Follow the Jews had to lie down on the corpses of murdered Jews before. The arrows stand for the Jews and kill them shot in the head ... "
"Naked Jews were sent into a ravine about 150 feet long, 30 meters wide and as much as 15 meters deep. In this ravine led two or three narrow passage through which the Jews descended ...
Shooting shuts Only two police officers. One of them worked at one end of the ravine, the other - the other ...
Passing over the bodies of dead for the next victim who managed to lie down during this time, gunner immediately shot her ...
I watched all this long. Going to the pit, I'm so scared of what he saw that he could not go a long look. In the pit, I saw dead bodies lying in the width of three rows, each about 60 meters. How many layers lying one on another, I could not see ... Besides the two gunmen, each passage in the ravine was a "stacker" - shuts it was a police officer, which is so packed on the corpses of victims, that passing by tommy could only do a shot.
When the victim went into a ravine ... they were immediately seized "handlers" and joins the rest. "
Nazis murdered
Every Tuesday and Saturday, for 102 weeks, Yar shot. According to various reports, all were murdered here between 150 and 200 000 people.
For two and a half months before the liberation of Kiev by Soviet troops Nazis began to destroy the traces of its hasty "activity" at Babi Yar. Syrets camp prisoners were fed and sent to dig up the corpses.
From the memoirs of Mikhail Matveev, who survived a concentration camp prisoner Syrets:
"The diggers dug pits, exposing deposits of corpses, which were bluish-gray in color, packed, packed and intertwined. They were pulling things torment. In some bodies, particularly children, there were no injuries - those who fall asleep alive. The bodies of some women, especially young people, were, on the contrary, sadistically mutilated, probably before his death.
From the stench of the Germans' noses pinched, some became ill ...
Kryuchniki pulled out the bodies and dragged them to the ovens. They were given a specially forged metal rods with a handle at one end and a hook at the other ...
Topaide (head of executions in 1941 and head of recovery of corpses in 1943) after many experiments, developed a system of pulling out of the corpse so that it is not torn apart. To do this, ought to stick a hook under the chin and pull the lower jaw, then he went a whole, and so he was dragged to the place.
Sometimes the bodies stick together so tightly that leaned on the hook two or three people. Often had to cut with axes, and the lower strata undermined several times ... "
After sixty years, there will be articles on the Internet some "researchers" who justify - in Syretsko camp, no one was killed, the prisoners themselves, "died." And in the Babi Yar no shot, all - fiction Zionists. But more on that below ...
Communists killed
At Babi Yar, the Nazis hide failed. Burn so many corpses, they simply do not have time to physically.
In 1957, after almost fifteen years after the liberation of Kiev, the Ukrainian Party Central Committee decided to delete the Babi Yar from the earth by the total building.
In Yar began to bring their pulp from the pits. The idea was as follows - the water will flow through the gutters, and compacted mud and forever by future generations sokroet Yar tragedy. So in place of mass executions appeared turbid lake ...
Height of the dam with a 6-storey building burst in 1961. March 13 a huge shaft of dirt at speeds dozens of homes washed away and buried under a thousand people.
A year after the tragedy to the execution of hundreds of thousands of citizens have been thrown a huge force in the form of equipment and manpower. Babi Yar was buried and paved highway over it.
Where there was a concentration camp, erected a residential area. The Jewish cemetery uprooted. The graves with coffins were opened, ruffle, like weeds, and built a television station that broadcasts and now the whole country a reasonable, good and eternal.
In 1965, in the heart of Yara have decided to build a stadium and an amusement park, but a year later, after the speeches and rallies held in place indifferent shooting, venture left.
To date, the epicenter of the shootings is an overgrown park, located at a distance from the "official" monument, located a "side" of the actual site of the tragedy. The park youth drink beer, and the blood-soaked ground on the weekends are organized gay "piknichki" ...
If visiting you need to stay in Kiev you can rent an apartment in the center of the cheaper hotels.
