September 30 1941 – 9 Tishrei 5702
On Yom Kippur Eve, Nazi SS soldiers completed their massacre of the Jews of Kiev over two days of mass shooting in the Babi Yar ravine. This was the biggest of all the akzia operations in which thousands of Jews were shot at the edge of killing pits, creating enormous mass graves. Over 33,000 Jews were killed at Babi Yar in just forty-eight hours, and the chilling details of the atrocity are recorded in Anatoly Kuznetsov’s novel and Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem, both named for the place which the Germans and their Ukranian accomplices made synonymous with the Valley of Death. The horrific testimony of survivors who fell (or even jumped) into the pit while still alive and managed to crawl out from under the heaped bodies despite their wounds, still resound today.