Ukraine's Babi Yar massacre

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

During World War Two, Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany and on 29th September 1941, the organised massacre of Ukrainian Jews began. In the capital Kyiv, most of the victims were taken to a ravine on the outskirts of the city called Babi Yar, and shot. In 2011, David Stern spoke to Raissa Maistrenko, who escaped the shooting as a three-year-old girl, and to Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny, whose mother survived the Holocaust outside the city.

PHOTO: The memorial at the Babi Yar site near Kyiv (Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service.
0:41.3	All this week we're looking at the history of Ukraine in the light of the Russian invasion.
0:46.3	Today we're going back to the Second World War when Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany
0:51.9	and the mass killing of its Jewish community began.
0:55.0	This report is from David Stern and was first broadcast in 2011. It is late September 1941.
1:14.0	Much of Ukraine, home to around 2.5 million Jews has been occupied by German forces.
1:21.0	A notice has just gone up around the capital city Kyiv.
1:25.0	The note said that all the Jews should gather at the 8th in the morning on the 29th of September, 1941 in the area next to Lukayanivskar Cemetery,
1:40.0	and a rumor was spreaded in Kyiv that Nazis will evacuate, choose away from Kyiv.
1:50.0	Because not so far from this gathering point was a real way station and still is.
1:55.0	Rabbi Alexander Duchovny leads the Hatikva progressive synagogue in Kiev.
2:00.0	His mother survived the Holocaust as a small girl in the Ukrainian town of
2:05.0	Urujin. Rabbi Duhoveni now takes visitors around the Babby Yar site.
2:10.0	Early in the morning, 8 in the morning, on the 29th of September, a big crowd of Jewish people
2:18.3	started to come to this announce point. Raisa Maestrenko, the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Christian father, was just three years old,
	...

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