By: HISTORY.com Editors

1941

Babi Yar massacre begins

Published: February 09, 2010Last Updated: May 27, 2025

The Babi Yar massacre of nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women and children begins on the outskirts of Kiev in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

The German army took Kiev on September 19, and special SS squads prepared to carry out Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s orders to exterminate all Jews and Soviet officials found there. Beginning on September 29, more than 30,000 Jews were marched in small groups to the Babi Yar ravine to the north of the city, ordered to strip naked, and then machine-gunned into the ravine. The massacre ended on September 30, and the dead and wounded alike were covered over with dirt and rock.

Between 1941 and 1943, thousands more Jews, Soviet officials and Russian prisoners of war were executed at the Babi Yar ravine in a similar manner. As the German armies retreated from the USSR, the Nazis attempted to hide evidence of the massacres by exhuming the bodies and burning them in large pyres. Numerous eyewitnesses and other evidence, however, attest to the atrocities at Babi Yar, which became a symbol of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.

What Happened at the 1941 Babi Yar Massacre?

A ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv was the site of a major 'Holocaust by bullets' carried out by Nazi forces during World War II.

By: Patrick J. Kiger

Timeline

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1907

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1913

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1918

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1939

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1953

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1982

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1988

Stacy Allison becomes first American woman to reach summit of Mt. Everest

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1991

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1995

Mexican American voting rights advocate Willie Velasquez awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom

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2005

Reporter Judith Miller released from prison

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2006

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2008

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Holocaust

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