KIEV—The soil of Babi Yar is the color of pulverized ashes, its sooty gray and green landscape interrupted by the occasional trash heap. The sprawling park, just a few metro stops away from Kiev’s city center, was once dubbed “Kiev’s Switzerland” for its seemingly placid, plunging landscape.But Babi Yar’s history is not one of calm. On September 29, 1941, German forces and their Ukrainian collaborators began a two-day massacre of 33,771 Ukrainian Jews, including many members of my family, in the ravine that once cut through the park. The steep canyon spared their killers the trouble of digging a mass …read more
Source: The Atlantic
