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Babi Yar

Kiev, Ukraine

Babi Yar is a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev where Einsatzgruppen mobile squads killed at least 34,000 Jews over a one week period in September 1941. Russian estimates put the number of killed at nearly 100,000. Today, Babi Yar has come to symbolize the horrific murder of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen as well as the persistent failure of the world to acknowledge this Jewish tragedy.

With the initiation of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's assault on the Soviet Union, the mobile killing units of the Einsatzgruppen operated over a wide area of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea. There were four main divisions of the Einsatzgruppen - Groups A, B, C and D. All under Heydrich's general command, these groups operated behind the advancing German troops to eliminate political criminals, Polish government officials, gypsies and Jews. Jews were rounded up in every village, transported to a wooded area, or a ravine, stripped, shot and buried.

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