On 19 September 1941, Kyiv, capital of Ukraine, was occupied by the Nazi’s. Before then, Ukraine had been a reluctant part of the Soviet Union. Shortly after Nazi-Germany took hold of the city, it was decided to annihilate the Jews of Kyiv. On 29 and 30 September 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered approximately 33,771 Jewish civilians by shooting them at a nearby ravine, called Babyn Yar.

One of the main sources on the Babyn Yar massacre is the book Babi Yar. A Document in the Form of a Novel, by A. Anatoli (Anatoly Kuznetsov). Kuznetsov was born in Kyiv and fourteen years old at the time of Babyn Yar. Later he wrote an extensive eyewitness account, complemented with research, of wartime Kyiv (1941-1943) and what occurred at Babyn Yar. His typewriter is now part of the collection of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War.

Featured guest: Karel Berkhoff, Senior Researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Co-Project Director EHRI.

Karel talks about Babyn Yar and Kuznetsov.

Music accreditation:  Blue Dot Sessions
Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).