The March Of Death

Waiting their turns to be shot.


 

The Executions Begin

In small groups of ten, the Jews were taken along the edge of the ravine and shot. Nazis built a platform over the ravine and shot innocent Jews.
 
The massacre continues for two days. The units kill about 33,771 Jews: ~ men, women, and children, all died. SS hit children with shovels, those who lived were buried alive.

 

No One Was Spared

In the months that follow, the Einsatzgruppen shoot another 160,000 more Jews at Babi Yar. 20,000 Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war, were also killed at Babi Yar.

The historian Felix Levitas wrote:  "The executioners did not have enough time to finish their job. Therefore they began to put two people together, head by head, so that one bullet would kill two people. The wounded people were killed with shovels and children buried alive."
 

Elie Wiesel

Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, and speaker, verifies the story. Many of the buried were only half dead and the ground trembled for month afterwards. An eyewitness told him there were geysers of blood that shot up. Some of the monsters involved.

The Russians Advance On Kiev

By mid-1943, the Germans were on the retreat; the Red Army was advancing west. Soon, the Red Army would liberate Kiev and its surroundings. The Nazis, in an effort to hide their guilt, tried to destroy evidence of their killings - the mass graves at Babi Yar on August 18, 1943
 

300 Jews Dig Up 200,000 bodies

Jews from Syretsk concentration camp were brought to Babi Yar for this unholy work.

They toiled during the day, while SS romanced local women.

300 Jews Lived Here

During the burning of the bodies, 300 Jews lived in a cave. The Nazis stationed a machine-gun  at the entrance to keep watch over the prisoners.
 

The Ghastly Work - You Can See Clothing

Starting on On August 18, 1943,  the Jews dug up 200,000 bodies and cremated them. The Jews went to a nearby cemetery, took tombstones and built ovens.

Especially Gruesome

Because many had died a slow death many of the bodies were tangled (died holding each other and praying). The Jews used axes to chop them apart and a special 'Chin hook' to drag them.

The prisoners who had to pull the corpses out of the grave would place the hook under the corpse's chin and pull - the body would follow the head. The lower layers of bodies had to be dynamited several times.

The Nazis drank vodka to drown out the smell and the scenes.

Removing Valuables:

After the bodies were pulled out of the mass grave, a few prisoners with pliers would search the victim's mouths for gold. Other prisoners would remove clothing, boots, etc. from the bodies.

The Nazis Burn The Evidence

SS Colonel Paul Blobel  supervises the burning of the evidence of the massacres there.

Burning Bodies

First the Jews checked the bodies for valuables and then arranged them between stacks of logs. They had heads facing outwards and dosed the pile, and the hair, with gas.

The hair, soaked in gasoline, immediately burst into bright flame - that was why they had arranged the heads that way.

 Approximately 5,000 a day were burned.

Enlarge

Crushing the Bones:

Since there were usually large pieces of bone that had not burned in the fire, they needed to be crushed to fully destroy the evidence of Nazi atrocities. Prisoners would go through the ashes looking for valuables. Nazis had bone crushing machines, which turned everything into a powder.

Next and the Sonderkommandos threw the dust into the air.

15 Jews Escape And Tell The World

The Jews were locked in a cave, and one day Yasha Kaper found the key. In the middle of the night the Jews charged a machine gun that was guarding them, and some were killed, but 15 escaped and survived

Babi Yar Trials Dina Pronicheva, who was buried under 5 feet of bodies and dirt, the Nazis dynamited the ravine walls, dug her way out, and survived the massacre. She is seen here testifying at war crimes trial, Kiev, 1946. The Pope and Benjamin Netanyahu visited.

The Truth

Soviet archival records reveal that the atrocity propaganda, about Katyn and Babi Yar, was fabricated by Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman.

These two also invented the now discredited victim counts of Nazi concentration camps: 4 million at Auschwitz; 1.5 million at Majdanek and 3.5 million at Treblinka.A Kiev court threw out a lawsuit.

Babi Yar Memorial