Ukraine this week marks the anniversary of one of World War Two’s most notorious wartime massacres, reflecting on a key stage in Nazi Germany’s plan to kill off European Jewry and on persisting anti-Semitism at home.  

The ex-Soviet state is holding events to honour more than 33,000 victims shot and tossed into pits over two days in September 1941 in Babiy Yar, a ravine now in the Kiev suburbs. 

The focal point will be a forum on Wednesday, hosted by President Viktor Yushchenko, on the Nazi “final solution” and its ramifications today, especially in post-Soviet society. 

Kiev’s 150,000-strong Jewish community, swollen by refugees, was summoned to a gathering point on September 29, 10 days after the Nazis rolled practically unhindered into the city. 

Jews in Ukraine and Russia were long used to pogroms under the tsar. Living in a closed society and all but ignorant of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies, most carried prized possessions on the mistaken notion that the Germans would resettle them. 

“My grandmother had me in one arm and her passport in the other. She kept crossing herself and crying ‘I’m Russian!” said Raisa Maistrenko, three at the time and half-Jewish and now one of a handful of survivors still alive. 

“A local policeman said everyone there was Jewish. He tried to hit me with his rifle butt. My grandmother protected me with her shoulder and we fell to the ground together.” 

Maistrenko, fled in the confusion with her grandmother to a cemetery, hid in in bushes through the night before stumbling home after dawn.

RNA