Which 1941 massacre at Babi Yar killed more than 33,000 Jews in two days?

The Babi Yar massacre was the 1941 massacre in which more than 33,000 Jews were killed in two days. German forces and local collaborators murdered Kyiv’s Jewish population at the ravine of Babi Yar on 29–30 September 1941.

Victims were ordered to assemble near a cemetery, then marched to the ravine, forced to undress, and shot in groups. A German report recorded 33,771 Jewish victims for those two days. Babi Yar later became a killing site for Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Ukrainian nationalists, psychiatric patients, and other civilians.

The massacre illustrates the role of mass shootings in the Holocaust before extermination camps reached their later scale. The ravine was partially concealed and destroyed by the Germans in 1943. Soviet public memory initially emphasized generic civilian suffering rather than the specifically Jewish character of the crime.