DURING THE OCCUPATION OF KYIV, UKRAINE BY THE GERMANS, SOVIET EXPLOSIVES KILLED MASSES OF GERMAN SOLDIERS.

 During the occupation of Kyiv, Ukraine by the Germans, Soviet explosives killed masses of German soldiers.

In retaliation, at 8am on September 29–30, 1941, SS and German police along with members of Einsatzgruppe C, ordered the remaining Jews in the city to gather at the ravine at Babyn Yar (Babi Yar in English) just outside the city for 'resettlement'. 

Forced to undress, and walk into the ravine, the Jews were murdered by mass shooting in groups. Each group was horrifyingly made to walk on top of those already executed, to lay face down on top of them, before being shot in the back of the neck. 

Dina (Vera) Mironovna Pronicheva was a Soviet Jewish actress at the Kiev Puppet Theatre, and was one of those ordered to a precipice of a cliff to be shot to fall into the ravine. Miraculously she jumped as the shot rang out and avoided being hit.

 Injured, with blood coming from her head, she lay lifeless amongst the bodies, even as the German soldiers scanned the fallen for those still alive and kicked and shot them again. Eventually, Vera escaped, climbing up through the soil and sand which had been piled up on top of the bodies. She hid with a young girl Motia and a young boy Fima, whom she later saw murdered.  It was not the end of her many brushes with death at the hands of the Nazis.

Approximately 33,771 Jews were murdered at Babi Yar. At the time it was the largest single atrocity of the war to date. The massacre took 36 hours. People were forced to wait guarded in a meadow where beyond the hill they could hear the relentless gunfire. 

The Nazis continued to use the ravine at Babi Yar throughout the war, killing another 70,000 individuals including Romani people, psychiatric patients, prisoners of war and other civilians.  It was not until 1991, 50 years after the massacre that a menorah-shaped monument was erected at Babi Yar to publicly acknowledge the Jews who were murdered at the site as well as the other victims. 

📷 Dina Pronicheva on the witness stand, January 24, 1946, at a Kiev war-crimes trial of fifteen members of the German police responsible for the occupied Kiev region. Image in the public domain courtesy of WikiMedia Commons.