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What happened at Babi Yar near Kyiv in September 1941?

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Samuel Bak: Smoke — Holocaust *Smoke*, oil on linen by Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak, 1997.

In late September 1941, following the German occupation of Kyiv, the Nazi SS and their mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, perpetrated a horrific massacre at the Babi Yar ravine.12

Driven by genocidal antisemitism and fueled by false blame placed on the Jewish population for an explosion at a German command post, the Nazis systematically targeted the city's Jews for extermination. Over a 36-hour period on September 29 and 30, nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children were marched to the ravine, forced to strip, and machine-gunned into the pit.1

This atrocity stands as a definitive symbol of the early stages of the Holocaust, representing the brutal efficiency of the Einsatzgruppen in their campaign to murder Jews, Roma, and Soviet officials. It is a moral imperative to acknowledge that these killers acted with agency; as historical analysis confirms, individuals had the choice to refuse participation, yet the vast majority chose to commit these heinous acts of mass murder.12