Before the war, the Jewish population of Kyiv was 216,000. Men of draft age went off to the front in the first days of the war; some were evacuated with the factories. Those left behind in the city were women, children, and the elderly. The idea of evacuation was horrendous. Where would you go, and how would it be possible with children and old people? Already by mid August 1941, it was practically impossible to leave Kyiv. Exactly how many Jews were left in the city when the Germans arrived is hard to determine, but the number was certainly in the tens of thousands.
The Sixth German Army entered Kyiv on September 19, 1941; elements of Einsatzgruppe C and Police Regiment South arrived in the days that followed. They were in a calm and confident mood. The city was in the rear of the German advance. Stores and movie theaters were open. Officers stayed in hotels downtown, on Kreshchatik Street.
Without warning, Stalin’s doctrine that "the ground should burn under the enemy’s feet" came into effect. The report of Einsatzgruppe C of September 28, 1941, reads:
On September 24, there was a powerful explosion in the building housing the field headquarters, causing fires that are still burning. The city center is aflame. The most valuable buildings have been destroyed. Efforts to extinguish the fire have so far been without success.*
Several hours later the whole city center had turned into flaming ruins. Buildings continued to explode.
It has been repeatedly noticed that the fires start as soon as the buildings are occupied. Jews are actively participating in the fires. |
It seems as if there are 150,000 Jews. It is not yet possible to verify these numbers. In the first action, 1,600 arrests were made. Measures have been taken to capture the entire Jewish population; capital punishment is envisaged for at least 50,000 Jews. The Wehrmacht welcomes these measures and requests radical actions. The city commandant is applying for the public execution of 20 Jews.**
There were members of the underground in Kyiv, a few of whom were Jews. The remaining tens of thousands of Jewish women and children had no connection either to the explosions or to the fires that followed. But the principle of Nazi ideology was to be followed: all Jews are responsible for the explosions and for the fires.
On September 26, a meeting was convened by the heads of the occupation forces (the city commandant Major General Friedrich Georg Eberhardt; the commander of Einsatzgruppe C, Dr. Otto Rasch; the Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln; and the commander of Sonderkommando 4a, Paul Blobel).
The meeting discussed measures for the "transfer" of the city’s Jewish population. These measures were entrusted to Sonderkommando 4a under Blobel, reinforced by the 45th and 303rd police battalions (under police majors Besser and Hannibal, respectively) and a Ukrainian auxiliary police unit under the command of A. Kabaida.
Initially, the location used for the executions was the Goloseevo Forest, but the advantages soon became clear of a location on the edge of the city, beyond the city cemeteries, where there was a system of natural ravines, anti-tank ditches, and training trenches.
This place in Kyiv is known as Babi Yar, literally the "old woman’s ravine". How did it come to have this name? One story is that there were streams where old women would go to wash clothes. According to another, the ravine used to be full of berries and they would go there to pick them. The name has gentle, kind associations.
And this large ravine proved highly convenient. No need to expend effort and resources to dig enormous graves, this would the most convenient place to kill all of Kyiv’s Jews.
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