Babyn Yar

(aka Babi Yar aka Бабий Яр aka Бабин Яр)

it was a stormy day today in kiev (i’d usually make it a museum day) but it let up a bit in the afternoon so i decided to head out to babyn yar (i’m using the ukrainian latinization) — it was actually quite fitting weather for visiting the site and memorials of a nazi massacre.

a week after they occupied kiev in september 1941, the nazi regime decided to kill all the jewish civilians in the city. under the masquerade of a mass relocation, 33,771 people were led to the babyn yar ravine and murdered, the largest single massacre in the history of the holocaust. over 100,000 more people of various backgrounds were murdered at that location for various reasons as the war went on. i urge you to read the wikipedia article before going (or even if you are not). absolutely haunting.

as much as the tragedies deserve as much publicity as they can get, i didn’t want to write a blog entry about that in particular — i just wanted to write up directions on how to get there, since it’s not very clear (at least not in LP, except for getting to the ravine itself, not the memorials) and there are no signs.

directions

there are actually multiple memorials in the vicinity of the actual ravine; this is how to get to the major ones (the complete list is here) and then to the ravine itself.

take metro line 3 (green / M3) towards syrets (Сирець — where there was a concentration camp nearby) and get off at the second to the last stop, dorohozhychi (Дорогожичi — letter A on the map below). when you exit the station, (while still underground) go left and continue as far as you can go (going under melnykova street) and emerge to the left on the other side.

location 1 is the wooden cross in memory of the 621 ukrainian nationalists, location 2 is the memorial to the soviet citizens and POWs, location 3 is the menorah-shaped monument to the jews massacred at location 4, the ravine.

to get to the ravine, go down melnykova street until you get to number 44, right before a large (dare i say ugly soviet-era) television station and turn left down the pedestrian walkway (on the map, it’s where the number 44 is) and go all the way down to the large menorah memorial. from there, paths will lead to the ravine.

mini-instawalk

the ravine today

a path at the edge of the ravine