(Australian Jewish News) Alex Ryvchin - Every Jew from the Soviet Union knows the words "Babi Yar." The Jews of Kiev, people indistinguishable from me in appearance, in native tongue, in cuisine, were murdered in that ravine during World War II. By chance, my family had the fortune to be evacuated a few weeks before the city fell, a turn of fate through which I was born. I traveled to Babi Yar in hope of grasping how the events that happened there could occur. How it could be that within days of the withdrawal of the Red Army, a peaceful, well-integrated civilian community could simply be plucked from their ordinary lives and led to that ravine, looted, stripped naked and murdered in their tens of thousands. How could their Ukrainian neighbors line the streets to watch the spectacle of howling Jewish children being taken to die, of old women carrying their bundles to nowhere? How could they have cheered and taunted, helped themselves to the possessions of people among whom they had lived for generations, and deposited more tip-offs to the Germans about hiding Jews than the Nazis could process? And how could these scenes be repeated, day after day, in towns and villages across Soviet territory? How was it that a force of 3,000 killers of the Einsatzgruppen could be allowed to carry out the murders of 1.5 million people? How could it pass that the well-educated, cultured men that filled the ranks of the killing squads could perform their work of hunting and terminating every single Jew, not only with a deathly efficiency but with an unmistakable sadism? The writer is the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
2021-04-01 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive