What Was the Babi Yar Massacre?

The last reel we posted touched on the Holocaust in Soviet territory. One of this chapter’s most infamous atrocities was the Babi Yar Massacre, on September 29th-30th 1941. Within these two days, which began on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, around 34,000 Jews from Kiev, Ukraine, were murdered. While the massacre was perpetrated by Nazi forces and local collaboration, the silence was broken by Dina Pronicheva, one of the few survivors of Babi Yar. After jumping into the pit to escape the bullets, she crawled out from the bodies to return to her family, and ultimately, to tell the world the truth. Her testimony helped to turn a site of systematic murder into a site of eternal remembrance.