Today, September 29, marks the 85th anniversary of the start of the mass shootings at Babi Yar, where the Nazis killed approximately 34,000 Jews in just two days. This original piece serves as a reminder of that terrible date, of the people behind the statistics, and of the names that must not be forgotten.
About the Author
Andreas Albrecht lives with his family in Cologne and is the father of two daughters. For many years, he has been involved in parent-teacher associations at schools in Cologne and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Another important focus of his personal civic engagement is the work to preserve memory. He is a supporting member of Kölsche Kippa Köpp and a board member of the Cologne–Esch-sur-Alzette City Partnership Association.
I am not writing as a historian. I am writing because I want to remember. I am recording my thoughts and feelings in the hope of reaching people who are willing to face the truth. So that the past does not remain distant, abstract, or forgotten.
The impetus came from a pin produced by the charity Ancre Somme Association Charity, which is being distributed through the Empire Poppy Store to mark the 85th anniversary of the mass murder at Babi Yar. A small symbol meant to make memory visible. For me, it did just that.
Pin commemorating the 85th anniversary of Babyn Yar. PHOTO: Andreas Albrecht
It didn’t remain just an object. It turned into a question that wouldn’t let me go: “What do I really know about this place?”
Babyn Yar.
A ravine near Kyiv. The place where, on September 29 and 30, 1941, German perpetrators killed approximately 34,000 Jews over the course of two days.
A German Einsatzgruppe report lists 33,771 people killed over those two days. This figure comes from the perpetrators’ own documentation and gives the impression of precision that fails to convey the true scale of the massacre on an individual level. Therefore, it is more accurate to speak of approximately 34,000 people killed.
But even this figure covers only the large-scale mass killings of September 29 and 30, 1941. The killings in Babyn Yar continued throughout the entire period of the German occupation. In total, it is estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews were killed there.
These figures must be stated. They reveal the scale of the crime. But remembrance must not stop there.
Before Babyn Yar became a place of death, Kyiv was a city with a rich Jewish life. Jews lived in Kyiv; they worked, studied, loved, and cared for their families. They had homes, professions, memories, and plans.
However, even before the German occupation, Jewish life in the Soviet Union was subject to significant state restrictions. Many synagogues were closed. In the 1930s, Jewish cultural and educational institutions were increasingly restricted; the network of Yiddish-language schools also shrank dramatically.
Despite these restrictions, Kyiv remained an important center of Jewish life. Jews were part of urban society—neighbors, friends, family members, colleagues, and classmates. Their lives were intertwined with this city and the history of Ukraine.
Before they became victims, they were fellow citizens—part of the shared life of this city.
Behind these numbers were people with very different life stories and circumstances: children and teenagers, adults and the elderly. They studied, worked, started families, fell in love, argued, worried, hoped, and made plans. Their daily lives were shaped by the political and social conditions of the time, just as much as by their personal experiences, concerns, and hopes.
It wasn’t just people who were killed in Babyn Yar. Along with them, ties were severed, families were destroyed, and futures were taken away.
Unfortunately, I cannot tell the stories of all the victims. I read some of their names at Yad Vashem. I would like to single out two of them—not because they can speak for everyone, but because through them, with the deepest respect, I wish to remember all the victims.
Paula Perlowitz was born in 1924 in Kyiv. She was a high school student and was only 17 years old.
My daughter Elena is 18 years old today—almost the same age Paula was when she was killed. Elena is full of joy for life and plans for the future. When I look at her, I feel even more keenly what the number 17 means.
We don’t know what Paula dreamed of or what plans she had. At 17, her whole life should have been ahead of her. Instead, she was brutally murdered in Babyn Yar.
Many years later, her former classmate Maria Kolominska remembered Paula and submitted a memorial letter about her to Yad Vashem. Thus, Paula’s name has been preserved—and with it, the memory of a 17-year-old girl whose life was cut short at Babyn Yar.
I am very grateful to Maria Kolominska for this contribution to preserving her memory. After all, thanks to people like her, we now know which names stand behind the numbers—and that each of these names represents a person, a life, and a story.
Maria Rubchynska was born in 1935, lived in Kyiv, and lived for only six years. Her mother, Sofia Rubchynska (née Livshits), was 43 years old and worked as a dentist. On September 29, 1941, mother and daughter were killed in Babyn Yar.
At six years old, Maria should have been playing, learning, and growing up. Her life was just beginning when she was robbed of any chance of a future.
Maria’s brother, Abram, survived. Later, he submitted memorial letters to Yad Vashem about his sister Maria and his mother Sofia. Thanks to his memory, their names have also been preserved.
So today we know not only that a six-year-old girl and her mother were among those killed. We know their names: Maria and Sofia Rubchynski. And we know that there was a brother and a son who refused to let them be swallowed up by oblivion.
At this point, I myself would like to pause for a moment and bow my head in prayer before Pola, Maria, Sofia, and all the victims of Babyn Yar. Perhaps you, too, would like to pause for a moment—in prayer, in silent reflection, or simply to remember the people whose lives were cut short here.
After this moment of silence, we must once again look at the crime itself.
Babi Yar was not a spontaneous outbreak of violence. The killings were planned, organized, and carried out on orders. In late September 1941, the German authorities decided to kill the Jewish population of Kyiv. On September 27 and 28, notices were posted throughout Kyiv. Jewish residents were ordered to report the following morning and bring their documents and personal belongings with them.
The German perpetrators spread a rumor that the Jewish population would be resettled. Dina Levina, who was still a little girl at the time, later recalled that her neighbors asked her to ask a German guard where they would be taken, since she knew a little German. He told her that they would be taken away and that they should not be afraid. Some believed in or hoped for the resettlement. Others sensed impending disaster. But they had to obey the order and faced the threat of death. Anyone who failed to show up was to be shot. Many came with children, elderly relatives, and sick people—family members they could not leave behind.
On the way to the Ravine, German forces and, in some cases, local auxiliary units participated in escorting the people and forcing them to keep moving. Beyond a certain point on the road, there was no turning back.
Raisa Dashkevich, who was born in 1916 and was one of the survivors of Babyn Yar, later recalled how the Germans formed a corridor through which they herded people. She was carrying her son in her arms. People were beaten with whips, and those who tried to dodge the blows were driven back by dogs. Raisa tried to shield her child with her own body so that the blows would land on her instead of him.
The people were driven onward. They had to leave their personal belongings and documents behind. Then came the stripping, more beatings, fear—and finally, the shootings.
Raisa survived. When she came to at night amid the bodies of the dead, her son was still beside her. He was already dead. According to her recollections, he did not die from a bullet, but suffocated under the weight of the bodies lying on top of her.
David Eisenberg also survived Babyn Yar. When he saw the horror before him at the edge of the ravine, he fainted and fell down before he was even shot. He came to his senses beneath the bodies of the murdered. The Germans shot the wounded who still showed signs of life. When a German stepped on his foot, David bit his finger to keep from making a sound. In the end, he, too, managed to escape Babyn Yar alive.
The horror of Babyn Yar must be called by its name, no matter how difficult it is to bear. The specific circumstances of the shootings varied in detail. But the goal was one and the same: the systematic murder of Jews.
Our memory must preserve more than just a number: the names of those killed, their faces, and their dignity—and it must clearly assign responsibility.
Babi Yar was a German crime. At its center was Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, under the command of Paul Blobel, supported by other German police and occupation units. Local auxiliary police and other local collaborators were also involved in the crime; there were informants and people who profited from the persecution and expropriation. This, too, is part of the truth.
This does not change the essence of the matter: the goal was the extermination of the Jewish inhabitants of Kyiv. The decision to kill them, as well as the organization and execution of the mass murder, took place under German orders. The killings in Babi Yar were part of the German war of extermination in the East and a manifestation of National Socialism’s anti-Semitic drive toward annihilation.
The killings did not end on September 30, 1941. Jews who had managed to escape the first mass murder and were later found were also taken to Babi Yar and killed. Until 1943, German perpetrators continued to use the ravine as a site of murder. Among the other victims were, in particular, patients from a psychiatric hospital, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and non-Jewish civilians.
Few other places shape our memory of the Shoah as profoundly as Auschwitz. But the Shoah did not take place only behind the camp gates. It also took place in the open air—in ravines and forests, at the edges of ditches, in fields, and often in the immediate vicinity of the places where people had previously lived.
Babi Yar was not the beginning of the mass shootings of Jews during the Shoah. The killings were already underway. But here, within a few days, they reached an early, horrific climax.
At least one and a half million Jews were killed on the territory of modern-day Ukraine. Many of them were not deported to distant camps but were shot near their towns and villages. Their graves remained where grass later grew again, roads were built, and people went about their daily lives.
But the perpetrators denied even the dead their peace and dignity.
In 1943, they forced prisoners at the Syrets camp to reopen the mass graves at Babyn Yar. The bodies of the murdered were dug up and burned; the bones were crushed, and the ashes and remains were scattered.
This was part of the so-called “Action 1005.” The National Socialists sought to destroy all traces of their mass crimes and all evidence. Whatever remained of the victims was to be destroyed as completely as possible.
No visible graves. No evidence. If possible—nothing that might remind anyone of the victims.
The prisoners forced to carry out this work were also to be killed afterward. Most of them were indeed killed. However, a few managed to escape. They survived and later recounted what the perpetrators had tried to hide in Babyn Yar.
But people remembered the mass murder at Babi Yar.
The survivors—including Dina Levina, Raisa Dashkevich, and David Eisenberg—later recounted what they had endured in Babyn Yar. Their testimonies preserved not only knowledge of the crime but also the voices of those who managed to escape. Relatives and friends preserved names and memories. People such as Maria Kolominska and Abram Rubchynsky filled out memorial forms. Historians reconstructed the victims’ life stories and the course of the crimes.
This is how the names, stories, and traces of their lives were preserved—and with them, the memory that behind every name was a person and a life. And there remains the hope that they will never be forgotten.
After the war, a new and complex chapter in the history of Babyn Yar began: attitudes toward this place and the question of how the memory of those killed was honored.
In official Soviet policy, the victims were primarily referred to as Soviet citizens and victims of fascism. The Jewish victims of the main mass murder and the anti-Semitic nature of their extermination were not the focus of state commemoration. The Soviet monument, erected in 1976, also did not explicitly name the Jewish victims as such.
This does not mean that their Jewish identity was unknown or that people did not remember them. During the period of glasnost and perestroika, public commemoration of Babyn Yar began to change. The Jewish victims and the anti-Semitic nature of the crime could increasingly be mentioned explicitly. This change continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
On September 29, 1991, on the 50th anniversary of the start of the mass murder, the “Menorah” monument was unveiled at Babyn Yar in memory of the murdered Jews.
Babyn Yar itself also underwent significant changes in the postwar decades. Parts of the ravine were filled in, roads were built, and certain areas were turned into parks. Much of what defined this place in 1941 can no longer be seen directly today.
However, the changes to the site itself must not lead to the crime and those who were killed being forgotten.
Babi Yar is one of the central sites of the Shoah in Eastern Europe and one of the most significant sites of mass shootings of Jews. Here, German perpetrators murdered tens of thousands of Kyiv Jews. This crime is part of German history—and preserving its memory is our duty and our responsibility.
Babi Yar must be an integral and permanent part of education about the Shoah.
Children and young people must know what happened there. At the same time, the history of Jewish life should not begin solely with its destruction. Education must also show how Jews lived before the persecutions, what role they played in their cities and communities, in the culture and lives of those around them, and what was lost with their murder.
This knowledge also includes the mass shootings, during which Jews were torn from their daily lives and often killed just a few kilometers from their homes—in forests, in fields, near ditches, and in ravines.
Anyone who wants to understand the Shoah must also be aware of this form of extermination—Babi Yar and many other places where Jews were killed right in their homeland.
And then there is the present.
In Ukraine, there are many known and still-unknown Jewish mass graves—places where victims of the Shoah were shot and buried without names on their gravestones and without a proper burial.
Today, people are once again being killed and tortured in Ukraine. Bodies have been found in mass and unmarked graves. Russia has invaded Ukraine and is waging a war there that is claiming countless lives. Bucha and Izyum have become symbols of crimes that are deeply etched into the history and soul of this country and its people.
Places of remembrance are also under threat. Memorials, Jewish cemeteries, as well as visible and hidden traces of the Shoah may be damaged or destroyed.
The current war has also affected Babyn Yar itself. On March 1, 2022, a Russian missile strike hit the Kyiv TV tower, which is directly adjacent to the memorial site. At least five people were killed. A few days later, UNESCO explicitly stated that the strike had also affected the Holocaust memorial at Babyn Yar. According to the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, the building that was to house the future Holocaust museum was also damaged.
The Shoah was a German anti-Semitic crime of extermination. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a grave crime of our time, in which people are killed, tortured, and abducted, families are torn apart, and cities are destroyed. Both must be clearly named—each in its own historical context.
But remembrance cannot end with the past. Remembrance also means taking responsibility for the present and the future. It compels us to unequivocally call injustice by its name and not to remain silent when people are deprived of their rights, persecuted, tortured, or killed—especially where not all the names have yet been inscribed on the old graves.
Those who remember those killed in Babyn Yar have no right to remain silent today. We must raise our voices—loudly and unequivocally.
Babi Yar reminds us: we must not let the victims be forgotten. Behind every number was a person. Behind every name was a life of its own.
On September 29 and 30, 1941, alone, approximately 34,000 Jews were murdered in Babyn Yar. The killings continued throughout the German occupation. In total, it is estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews were killed there.
Pola Perlowitz and Maria Rubchynska. Two names from Babyn Yar. Two people whose lives were brutally cut short far too soon.
We must not forget them or anyone else. It is our responsibility to preserve their names, remember their lives, and pass on their stories.
And this responsibility does not end with the past. It applies to both the present and the future—whenever injustice is committed.
This is our duty to the victims of Babi Yar, to the people of today and tomorrow, and to all who do not remain silent in the face of injustice.
Please honor the memory of all the victims of Babi Yar with a silent prayer. With deep respect for those who were killed, their families, and the Jewish tradition of remembrance.
Андреас Альбрехт
Publications in the "Blogs" section reflect only the author's point of view. The Intent editorial team's position may differ from the author's.
