Sometimes you just have to be direct and to the point in the hopes that people will listen. Tomorrow, Ukrainians commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre in the capital, Kiev. (CW: Genocide) /1 
When talking about Babi Yar, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. The figures are monstrous. The facts, however, are these: In the space of two days - the 29th and 30th of September, 1941 - over 33,000 Jews were taken to a ravine in the capital - known as Babi Yar - and shot. /2
The massacre was in retaliation for attacks against the Nazi occupiers of Kiev. SS leaders decided all Jews in the city must die. The governor, Kurt Eberhard directed SS Obergruppenfuehrer Friedrich Jeckeln & Paul Blobel, head of Sonderkommando 4a, to carry out the murders. 3/
Posters appeared around Kiev on the 26th of September directing all Jews to appear at certain locations for roundup by Nazi troops, supposedly for 'relocation'. They warned that anyone attempting escape would be shot on sight. /4
Over 30,000 Kiev Jews presented themselves on the morning of the 29th of September, 1941. A combination of SS, Wehrmacht and Ukrainian collaborators were used to strip the Jews first of their possessions, then their clothing, before driving them to the ravine. /5
Once at the ravine, the Jews of Kiev were led into it and shot in groups of 10. Soldiers would pick off anybody who showed signs of life with a pistol. The killing was only interrupted by nightfall, when the dead were buried by earthmover. It continued the next day. /6
By the Nazi’s own reports, 33,771 Jews were killed on the 29th and 30th of September, 1941 - equivalent to an entire large town. Only a few are known to escape - one was Yelena Gorodetsky, who now lives in Melbourne, Australia. /9
A few months after the massacre at Babi Yar, a number of high-ranking Nazi officials would meet at Wannsee, outside Berlin, and draw up plans for the ‘Final Solution’ - the extermination of European Jewry. /10
Around 70,000 more of Kiev’s residents would join the dead of Babi Yar before the Nazis withdrew. There was an attempt to burn the bodies, but the Soviets were able to secure the site and exhumation began after the war.. /11
Eberhard killed himself before he could see trial whilst in the captivity of the Americans. Jeckeln was tried and shot by the Soviets. Blobel was hung during the subsequent Nuremberg Trials. Many of the troops involved died during the war - a few made it home. /12
There are a number of memorials to the dead of Babi Yar in and around the site. One prominent one was defaced in 2006 - part of it smashed to pieces. /13
Babi Yar happened because men allowed themselves to see others than less than human. They saw them as a malignant disease, a cancer. Hatred and lies blinded them as they murdered men, women, children slowly and methodically over the course of hours. /14
You can learn more about the events of the 29th and 30th of September 1941, at the @yadvashem site. yadvashem.org/education/educ…
Don’t talk to me about the threat that a people pose, or a ‘clash of cultures’ or ‘civilizations’. Don’t speak to me of ‘nationalist pride’ or ensuring ‘sovereignty’. Never tell me that your ideology or creed is different or 'the way forward'. I don’t want to hear it. /FIN
PS. There is plenty of evidence of the Babi Yar massacre - photographs and survivor testimony, as well as the physical remains. I purposely did not include images of the dead out of a desire to give them dignity.
