the territory of modern ukraine has been fought over many times in history...even now, the people of ukraine don't always view themselves as "ukrainian"...you'll find polish, jewish, hungarian, russian, and more...during various wars, the people of ukraine have fought for many sides...during WWII, ukrainians fought for germany, for the russians, and even for themselves...one group that wasn't much liked were the jews...(a theme of jewish history in general)...as in many other countries, jews were persecuted more than other groups in the country...the jewish community now is a lot smaller than it used to be...
before world war 2, ukraine had a fairly high population of jews...after the war, not so much...not so much at all...at the end of september, 1941, approximately 30,000 jews in the kyiv area were rounded up and taken to a ravine in northern kyiv...they were massacred, the bodies put into the ravine...this wasn't the only massacre to take place at this ravine, it's just the first...after this initial massacre, the area was made into a concentration camp called syrets, after the suburb of kyiv in which it is located...historians aren't sure, but the numbers generally accepted are 100,000-150,000 additional lives were taken around the ravine...
2 years after the initial massacre, when the nazis were retreating from the area, they attempted to cover up what had happened...approximately 300 prisoners were made to dig up the bodies in the ravine, then burn the bodies in homemade ovens (gravestones were used to make the ovens) and scatter the ashes in nearby farmland...this burning of the bodies has made it extremely difficult to identify most of the remains that have been found...
the ravine, called babyn yar, is now in the middle of a large park...
since i'd been in kyiv for nearly an entire school year, i wanted to see as many of the places listed in the guidebook as possible...babyn yar was one of the last places i had yet to see...i took the subway, there is a stop right at the edge of the park...
just outside the subway station is a memorial to the children killed in these massacres...it reminded me a lot of the childrens' memorial at the holodor memorial in another area of kyiv...why does anyone want children to suffer?
the map in the guidebook wasn't entirely correct...again...(lonely planet is not known for the accuracy of its maps)...i thought i knew where i was going, and where i could find the first memorial mentioned in the guidebook...i was wrong...i was first looking for the soviet memorial, which was supposed to be pretty big...(and it was, when i found it later)...
walking through the park i saw heaps of people going for walks...it's a nice area, really quiet...if i'd had a book, i probably would've hung out there for a while...after taking random turns on paths, i found the jewish memorial, a large menorah...it's nice...not far from that memorial i found a small path that led me to one end of the ravine where all the massacres took place...the path wasn't obvious...at the very end of the path was a very small cemetary, the graves were old...i don't know who they belonged to, but it was sad to see they weren't taken care of, and haven't been for quite some time...i hope someone makes an effort to take better care of this area...
looking over the edge into the ravine, i wouldn't have had any idea of its historical importance if i hadn't read the guidebook...no bones or bodies are now visible at the bottom of the ravine...(thank goodness)...in fact, the trees have taken over the entire area, the ravine doesn't look very big now...
after following a couple paths for a while, i eventually came back to the subway station...the subway station is on one corner of a large intersection, and while walking, i noticed an exit on another corner...by that corner was a large flat area...i finally found the soviet memorial! the guidebook was right, it was big...
the memorial is at the edge of what looks to be a wide, shallow ravine...it seems as though many people think this is the ravine where the massacres happened, but that isn't the case at all...when i finally figured it out, i realized this memorial isn't close at all to where the ugly events happened...on the front side of the memorial are three plaques, none of which could i understand...i'm assuming russian, ukrainian, and yiddish are the languages i could see? i don't know...the guidebook tells me none of those plaques makes any mention of the fact that jews made up the majority of those killed in the area...that's totally typical soviet...
the large soviet memorial was the last memorial i saw...after that i hopped back on the subway, back into town...though only 4 stops, it wasn't a short ride...
