The outrage in Ukraine over the attack near Babi Yar, the memorial to the victims of a Nazi massacre in Kiev

Babi Yar was the site of one of the largest massacres in modern history.

It is the place where thousands of Jews were lined up and shot en masse during the Holocaust executed by the Nazis in World War II.

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A memorial erected there, in the Ukrainian capital, is a special site for the country. It has a meaning of its own for Kiev.

That is why groups of Jews have condemned the shelling on the memorial carried out by Russian troops besieging Kiev.

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In a country with a large Jewish population, with a Jewish president, the attack carries weight.

Staff looking after the memorial have not yet been able to access it to see the true scale of the damage, but footage showed one of the museum buildings on fire.

A burning building in Babi Yar. (BABYN YAR HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack was “beyond humanity” and also accused the West of not doing enough to prevent the siege of his country.

“What’s the use of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world remains silent when a bomb falls on the same site as Babi Yar? There were at least 5 dead. History repeats itself…” he wrote on Twitter. .

Warning: some of the images below may be disturbing to some people

The atrocities at Babi Yar

Babi Yar, also spelled Babyn Yar, is one of the largest World War II mass graves in Europe.

The massacre in the ravine on the outskirts of Kiev took place During two days in September 1941.

While Ukraine’s Jews were fleeing the Nazi advance, a large population still lived in the city.

Tens of thousands were told to gather in spare clothing, assuming they would be sent to a labor camp, but were then forced to undress and walk into the ravine, where they were shot by special squads of death.

The Nazis used Babi Yar as an execution site between 1941 and 1943. (ALAMY)

According to the Nazis’ own records, 33,771 Jews were killed in two days.

As the Holocaust continued, German forces continued to commit horrendous crimes at Babi Yar, using it as a mass grave to dispose of up to 100,000 bodies.

That was until the Soviets took control of Kiev again in 1943.

Besides Jews, Roma and Ukrainian civilians and Soviet prisoners of war they were also killed there.

The victims were ordered to undress in the ravine before being shot. (ALAMY).

As the Germans retreated, they razed the ravine and burned the bodies on huge pyres to try to cover up their crimes.

The recent Russian attack

That place is now a place of silent contemplation, where thousands of people travel each year to remember those who have died.

That can be damaged or destroyed by an aggressive military attack goes against everything it stands for.

But the significance of the latest Russian attack runs deeper.

“It is symbolic that [el presidente ruso Vladimir Putin] start attacking Kiev by bombing the site of Babi Yar, the biggest Nazi massacre,” said Natan Sharansky, chairman of the memorial’s advisory board.

A television tower next to Babi Yar was damaged by the Russian attack, which left 5 dead. (REUTERS).

Last week, Putin called Ukraine’s leaders “neo-Nazis” and said the goal of the Russian military operation was the “denazification” of the country.

Sharansky noted that the Russian leader tried to “distorting and manipulating the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country” in an “absolutely abominable” move.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, echoed this, calling for an end to the “abuse and distortion of the memory of the Holocaust.”

President Zelensky has often told his “story of four brothers” – his grandfather and three great-uncles – who fought in the Soviet Army against Nazi Germany. Only his grandfather survived.

“Such a missile attack shows that for many people in Russia, our Kiev is completely foreign. They don’t know anything about our capital or about our history,” Zelensky said after the attack.

“But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all.”

The synagogue on the site was officially opened in May 2021. (AFP)

While official figures put Ukraine’s Jewish population at 43,000, the European Jewish Congress believes it to be at least 360,000.

erasing history

The Soviets tried to erase the brutal history of Babi Yar over and over again, in an effort to suppress any mention of the atrocities committed against Jews, Sharansky told the BBC.

“They tried to physically destroy these tombs and erase history. It’s amazing how important it was for the Soviets to change the nature of the place,” he explained.

A few years after the Nazis wanted to cover their own tracks, the Soviets they tried to fill the ravine with mud.

Then, in the 1960s, planned the construction of a sports stadium.

Sharansky said that the construction of the television tower adjacent to the monument in the 1970s was another attempt to “destroy the memory of the Holocaust.”

“There were so many attempts to erase Babi Yar and change its nature, but finally we turned it into a great monument and that is once again overshadowed by Russian aggression,” he lamented.

President Zelensky is Jewish. In the photo he is seen in the Babi Yar Menorah. (GETTY IMAGES).

During decades of Soviet rule there was no big sign marking the site of the massacre, except for a simple obelisk referring to the “Soviet” victims, not to mention the Jews, who were the main victims.

Finally, in the 1990s, a great monument to the Menorah, when the independent Ukraine decided to commemorate the Jewish victims. And last year a synagogue was opened.

“Instead of being subjected to blatant violence, sacred sites like Babi Yar must be protected“, Yad Vashem said in a statement.

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Source: Elcomercio