Babi Yar

Babi Yar UPDATE 2 March 2022: like the rest of Kyiv , this site is now out of reach for tourism due to Putin’s ongoing war against Ukraine . In this case it may be even worse. Yesterday’s footage of the missile attacks on the adjacent TV tower may mean that the memorial site itself might have been hit as well. Russians bombing one of the most sacred Holocaust memorial sites … how much more insane can it get? ---------------------------------------------------------- - darkometer rating : 6 - The site on the outskirts of Kyiv of one of the worst massacres of Jews that the Nazi " Einsatzgruppen " ever perpetrated during the pre- death-camp phase of the Holocaust . > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Kyiv had (and to a lesser degree still has) one of the oldest, largest and historically most important Jewish communities in the world. When Germany pushed forward during its invasion of the then Soviet Union and reached Kyiv/Kiev in September 1941, this Jewish community predictably became a target for the Nazis ' genocidal zeal (and about 50,000 had not fled before the arrival of the Germans). At that time, the "common practice" was still that of SS " Einsatzgruppen " rounding their victims up, herding them to mass graves and shooting them en masse. (The systematic "industrialized" killing centres of the Operation Reinhard death camps came later). Babi Yar is the very worst example in terms of the scale of the killings. On 29 and 30 September, Kyiv/Kiev’s Jews were first rounded up (under a vaguely veiled pretext of deportation to somewhere else).