Baby Yar

Baby Yar

Large ravine near Kiev, Ukraine, the site of a mass grave of some 100,000 people killed by German Nazi SS squads between 1941 and 1943. Most of the victims were Jews, but some were communist officials and Russian prisoners of war. After the initial massacre of Jews, Baby Yar remained in use as an execution site for Soviet prisoners of war and for Roma (Gypsies) as well as for Jews. It became the symbol of the first stage of killing during the Holocaust and of the massacres by the Einsatzgruppen (German: “deployment groups”)—the mobile killing units. The site came to world attention after the 1961 publication of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem Baby Yar. Though a small obelisk and memorial were erected in the 1960s and '70s, not until 1991 was the identity of the Jewish victims recorded on the monument by the newly independent Ukrainian government.