Babi Yar Memorial

Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) is a ravine in the Syrets district of north-western Kyiv where some 100,000 people — primarily Jews, but also Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and Ukrainian nationalists — were killed by the Nazis between 1941 and 1943. The ravine itself was largely filled in during the postwar redevelopment of the area.

A scattered collection of memorials now occupies the site: the Soviet bronze of 1976; the Menorah of 1991; the contemporary glass-and-steel synagogue of 2021 by Manuel Herz; and the still-evolving Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. The grounds are open and walkable.

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A story
On 29 and 30 September 1941 the Einsatzgruppen and Ukrainian collaborators marched 33,771 Jews to a ravine on the northern edge of Kyiv and shot them in two days. It was the largest single massacre of the Holocaust. The Soviet authorities denied the specifically Jewish character of the killings for decades — only in 1991 was a proper memorial finally permitted.

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