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Nazis Murder 60,000 Jews, Burn Bodies to Cover Crime

Publication Date
Monday, November 29, 1943
Historical Event
Germans Kill Thousands of Jews in Mass Shooting Outside Kiev
This database includes 222 articles about this event
Tags
Gannett full page downloadable
Deportation and Mass Murder
Article Type
News Article
Newspaper
Argus Leader/The Daily Argus-Leader
Location
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Page Section and Number
2
Author/Byline
Eddie Gilmore (AP)
Article Text
Kiev. Russia, via Moscow, Nov. 29.—(AP)—About five miles outside Kiev to the south not far from the Dnieper river is one of the most horrible places in the world today.

It is called "Babii Yar (Wench's ravine)." There, the Russians say, between 60,000 and 80,000 000 Jews were killed by the nazis and their bodies were later burned.

I have been there, but I'll let the story tell itself.

We first were escorted there by Prof. Pavel Aloshin, the chief architect for the reconstruction of the Ukraine.

He has little blue eyes and a merry smile despite the fact that he had been here during the whole time of the German occupation.

"I want you to see Babii Yar," he said. "I can't explain it, and I can't explain why the Germans did such a thing."

We got out of our cars and walked over a trench which the Germans had thrown up to defend the highway when the red army drove upon Kiev from the south. Beyond the trench was a ravine about 40 feet deep, about 100 feet wide and half half mile long where it ran into a deeper, wider ravine.

He did know why it was called "Babii Yar."

Jews Shot Down

"In September, 1941." said AloshIn, "thousands of Jews were brought here. Their clothes were removed and in small groups they were mowed down by automatic gunners. Then they were buried. Recently they were dug up and burned by the Germans wanting to destroy all the evidence."

We asked him how he first heard of the slayings, and he said he first heard about it from a German architect who bragged about the mass murders.

"First the people's clothes were removed and then they were marched naked to a sort of platform over there," said Aloshin. "There they were shot down."

We asked him if there remained any Russians in Kiev who witnessed the slayings.

"No. I don't believe there were any Russians who saw them,” he said. "You can understand that the Germans wouldn't want witness for such a crime."

Pretty soon a crowd of peasant women and small boys began to gather. We asked them if they saw the shootings. They said they knew about them, but did not see them.

We walked into the ravine with the professor.

"I don't know what we'll find," he said, "because not long ago the Germans came out here as the red army was advancing and burned the bodies on huge stoves."

Aloshin said the digging up of the bodies and the burning was done by Russian war prisoners, some of whom went crazy after the grisly business was completed.

Fingers Seen

We walked along the ditch, which today seemed to be just sand.

Here and there were such things as fingers without hands. At another place there was a half-burned shoe with flesh inside. There were several bones about.

We also uncovered lots of broken burned spectacles. There were several pairs of broken false teeth.

We went back to the city. Finally the authorities took us back to the ravine. A commission was holding an investigation prior to making a report to the central committee investigating atrocities.

Burn Bodies

We were introduced to three men, all Jews, who reported that they were formerly red army soldiers who had been captured in Kiev and later brought here to burn bodies.

They were Efimir Vilkis, 33, a former porter in a Kiev railway station; Leonid Ostrovsky, 31, a former hat maker; and Vladimir Davidov, 28, a former carpenter.

They said they were captured when Kiev fell to the Germans and were put in a concentration camp.

Vilkis did most of the talking.

He said that on August 14 he and the other war prisoners were rounded up and brought to a huge dugout near the ravine.

There were about 100 soldiers with him, including Ostrovsky and Davidov.

On about August 19 of this year, the Germans marched him and the others into Babii Yar and giving them shovels told them to dig in the soft sand.

“We dug and began to come to bodies," Vilkis said. "There were hundreds of them. They made us take large tongs and drag these bodies up here."

“The Germans then made a layer of wood and then a layer of bodies and poured gasoline over them and set them on fire."

Vilkis said hundreds of bodies were burned in this manner.

After the bodies were burned, Vilkis, with the others nodding assent, said the Germans used huge crushers to crush the bones and destroy the evidence.

Build New Pyre

About August 28 he saw the Germans building a new pyre. The word got around among the prisoners and they assumed that they were to be shot and burned.

"We began trying to figure out some way to escape and the best way seemed to be to make a key to fit the lock on our dugout door,” he explained.

One of the prisoners was a former locksmith and he made such a key from a spoon.

A couple of nights later Vilkis said he and the other prisoners unlocked the dugout door and rushed into the ravine.

“We figured we would be killed anyway," he said. "so we yelled and shouted as we ran.

"Some of us were shot down, but we surprised the guards. There were not many about."

In the night he made his way to the country and hid there until the red army entered the sector.

The Russian conducting officers pointed out that the three Jews we had just talked to were about the only ones left in Kiev.

In walking about the city, we found the assertion apparently true, despite the fact that Kiev had a very large Jewish population before the war.

The officials said that some left before the Germans arrived, of course, but that many of them were unable to get away, the traffic being what it was and all communications heavily burdened.

That is the story as we heard it of Babii Yar.
History Unfolded Contributor
Andrew A.

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