September 30 — Babyn Yar Remembrance Day

Last Friday Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Premier Viktor Yushchenko, and Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ivan Pliushch laid flowers in memory of the Kyiv residents and military personnel shot in 1941-43 at Babyn Yar. The nation’s leaders honored the memory of the victims of fascism with a moment of silence, reports Interfax-Ukraine. As we know, on September 19, 1941, Soviet forces evacuated Kyiv after two months of heroic defense and already from September 28 to 30 35,000 Jews were executed in this ravine. From then until the Soviet Army retook Kyiv in August 1943 a total of almost 200,000 people were executed here, among them OUN-UPA nationalists (including the poet and public figure Olena Teliha). Of course, there are those who dispute this figure. The commission set up in 1945 under Nikita Khrushchev had more precise figures on the number shot here, but they were declared secret. When relatives of the victims called for their exhumation, they were refused. Ordinary Kyivans, young and not so young, many of them witnesses to the tragedy, also came to lay flowers at the memorial to the victims. A total of about 300 people gathered at the site, and at 4 p.m. the traditional requiem meeting took place.