[13] It is only surpassed overall by the later October 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews (committed by German and Romanian troops), and by Aktion Erntefest of November 1943 in occupied Poland with 42,000–43,000 victims.

[16] Two days later, on 26 September, Maj. Gen. Kurt Eberhard, the military governor, and SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the SS and Police Leader, met at Rear Headquarters Army Group South.

Contrary to the "myth of the clean Wehrmacht", the Sixth Army under the command of Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau worked together with the SS and SD to plan and execute the mass-murder of the Jews of Kyiv.

[21][22][23][24] The order to murder the Jews of Kyiv was given to Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, consisting of SD and SiPo men, the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion, and a platoon of the No.

[8][9][10][11] The commander of the Einsatzkommando reported two days later:[26] The difficulties resulting from such a large scale action—in particular concerning the seizure—were overcome in Kiev by requesting the Jewish population through wall posters to move.

[27]According to the testimony of a truck driver named Hofer, victims were ordered to undress and were beaten if they resisted: I watched what happened when the Jews—men, women and children—arrived.

When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot ...

[26] According to the Einsatzgruppe's Operational Situation Report, 33,771 Jews from Kyiv and its suburbs were systematically shot dead by machine-gun fire at Babi Yar on 29 and 30 September 1941.

[31] The money, valuables, underwear, and clothing of the murdered were turned over to the local ethnic Germans and to the Nazi administration of the city.

[21][40] The Syrets concentration camp was also built in the area, which was notorious for its cruelty[41] and execution of three Dynamo Kyiv football players who played in the Match of Death.

Downs described in a report to Newsweek what he had been told by one of the survivors, Efim Vilkis: However, even more incredible was the action taken by the Nazis between August 19 and September 28 last.

The Germans meanwhile took a party to a nearby Jewish cemetery whence marble headstones were brought to Babii Yar [sic] to form the foundation of a huge funeral pyre.

[48]One of the most often-cited parts of Anatoly Kuznetsov's documentary novel Babi Yar is the testimony of Dina Pronicheva, an actress of the Kyiv Puppet Theatre, and a survivor.

[51] In 2006, Yad Vashem and other Jewish organisations started a project to identify and name the Babi Yar victims.

[citation needed] Before the Nazis retreated from Kyiv ahead of the Soviet offensive of 1944, they were ordered by Wilhelm Koppe to conceal their atrocities in the East.

Paul Blobel, who had been in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the "special action" Sonderaktion 1005 to eliminate its traces.

[52] Several hundred prisoners of war from the Syrets concentration camp were forced to exhume the bodies for cremation in funeral pyres built atop layers of stolen Jewish gravestones.

Friedrich Jeckeln was convicted of war crimes by a Soviet military tribunal in the Riga Trial, sentenced to death, and hanged on 3 February 1946.

Twelve of them were sentenced to death (Fritz Beckenhof, Karl Burckhardt, Georg Heinisch, Wilhelm Hellerforth, Hans Isenmann, Emil Jogschat, Emil Knoll, Willi Meier, Paul von Scheer, Eckart Hans von Tschammer und Osten, Georg Truckenbrod, and Oskar Walliser).

[56] Erich Koch, who had been Reichskommissar of Ukraine at the time, was tried and sentenced to death by a Polish court for his atrocities in occupied Poland.

Memorials were not explicitly forbidden, but successive Soviet leaders preferred instead to emphasise the wide-ranging origins of those murdered at the site.

This meant that both Jewish and Roma peoples were not specifically memorialised at the Babi Yar site until the Soviet Union collapsed.

Babi Yar is located in Kyiv at the juncture of today's Kurenivka, Lukianivka and Syrets districts, between Kyrylivska, Melnykov, and Olena Teliha streets and St. Cyril's Monastery.

After the Orange Revolution, President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine hosted a major commemoration of the 65th anniversary in 2006, attended by Presidents Moshe Katsav of Israel, Filip Vujanović of Montenegro, Stjepan Mesić of Croatia and Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau.

[61]In 2006, a message was also delivered on behalf of Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations,[62] by his representative, Resident Coordinator Francis Martin O'Donnell, who added a Hebrew prayer O'seh Shalom,[63] from the Mourners' Kaddish.

An earthen dam in the ravine was used to hold loam pulp which had been pumped from the local brick factories without sufficient drainage over the course of ten years.

The dam collapsed after it was hit by a heavy rainstorm, resulting in a mudslide that swept away the low-lying Kurenivka neighborhood and several other areas.