Documentary Heritage of Babyn Yar

The collection recorded the tragic history of Babyn Yar – the places of mass shootings of civilians and prisoners of war, which is linked to the Nazi occupation of Kyiv during World War II. The first took place on 29 and 30 September 1941, when nearly 34,000 jews were shot. Between September 1941 and September 1943, the victims of the Nazi occupiers in Babyn Yar were about 100,000 civilians of Jewish, Roma, Ukrainian, and other nationalities, red army soldiers, nationalist and soviet underground activists. In the post-war years, Babyn Yar suffered a man-made catastrophe, which occurred on 13 March,1961, when a powerful mudslide through the broken dam flooded the area of Kyiv Kurenivka and led to numerous casualties. With Ukraine's independence, Babyn Yar has become a place of remembrance for victims of Nazi crimes. The collection is an integral part of human memory and an indefinite warning against the dangers of hatred, racism, ethnic hatred, persecution and extermination on ethnic, political, religious or other grounds.