Before the war, Kiev was the home to 160,000 Jews. As the German forces neared Kiev over 100,000 Jews fled eastward. Most of the remaining Jews were old or young not able to escape. The Germans entered the city on September 19, 1941. A few days after their arrival the army headquarters and other buildings blew up, hundreds of Germany soldiers and officers were killed. NKVD agents had placed the bombs. The Germans used the bombing as an excuse to liquidate the cities Jewish population.

On September 27th and 28th posters were put up throughout the city ordering the Jews to assemble to be resettled the next day. The Jews believed that they were indeed be resettled. Instead, the Einsatzkommando moved the Jews of Babi Yar to a ravine just outside the city call Babi War. Once there they were undressed and shot, with their bodies falling into the ravine.

Ukrainian policemen participated the slaughter, this is what one policeman recalled: “ The Germans formed a corridor and drove the panic-stricken people towards the huge glade, where sticks, swearing, and doges, who were tearing the people’s bodies, forced the people to undress, to form columns in hundreds, and then to go in the columns in twos towards the mouth of the ravine. Then they found themselves on the narrow ground above the price, twenty to twenty-five meters in height, and on the opposite side, there were the Germans’ machine guns. The killed wounded and half-alive people fell down and were smashed there. Then the next hundred were brought, and everything repeated again. The policemen took the children by the legs and threw them alive down in the Car.”

Thousands were buried alive a few managed to escape. In two days 33,771 Jews were killed at Babi War. Kiev and Babi Yar were just one of the many places that the Jews were killed by the tens of thousands.