Posted on 09/26/2006 1:39:41 PM PDT by knighthawk
Ukraine is marking the 65th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, when more than 30,000 Jews were shot by the Nazis in Kiev during Word War II. Israeli President Moshe Katzav is among dignitaries from more than 40 nations attending the two-day commemorations.
The killings began 10 days after Nazi troops occupied Ukraine's capital. The massacre lasted for two days.
During the war, at least 100,000 people - including Gypsies and Soviet Army prisoners - were killed in Babi Yar.
'Secret Holocaust'
In September 1941, the Jewish residents of the then capital of Soviet Ukraine were ordered to gather near a cemetery on the edge of the city.
Many thought they were being deported, but instead they were told to undress and walk to the edge of the Babi Yar ravine.
Over the next 48 hours almost 34,000 people were shot dead.
The massacre is being remembered with a series of events which started on Tuesday.
The commemorations were initiated by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, whose father was imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the war.
"Babi Yar is a symbol ... of the most secret Holocaust," said Moshe Kantor, founder of the World Holocaust Forum, which helped organise the events.
"The majority of the population doesn't know that after the Babi Yar killings happened, there were 6,000 more Babi Yars. We have to know about this," he said.
In Soviet times there were no high profile ceremonies to officially mark the massacre.
It was only in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, that a monument was put up to remember the Jewish victims.
Ping
"During the war, at least 100,000 people - including Gypsies and Soviet Army prisoners - were killed in Babi Yar."
Nearly half of the victims were Ukrainians - including the Dynamo Soccor Team which refused to throw a game to the Nazi championship team.
http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-14.html
In July 1941, for example, one German record cites "1,107 Jewish adults were shot by Kommando 4a and 561 juveniles by the Ukrainian militia." (OSR-USSR 88)
Were all Ukranians collaborators? No, not by a long shot. But it seems equally odd portraying them as plain victims, when so many of them welcomed Hitler with open arms.
The victims of Hitler in Ukraine were mostly Ukrainians.
Hitler tried hard to outdo the NKVD.
And who were comprised the NKVD?
Are you trying to legitimize the Holocaust?
Of course not. Are you trying to rewrite history of the Chekists, NKVD, and KGB?
Today probably wasn't the best choice to do so.
OUN did not kill Jews. In fact, there were Jewish OUN members.
Every concentration camp and every extermination camp also had Jewish collaborators, called "kapos".
If you know anything of Ukrainian history, you'd know that every foreign unit fighting for Germans was signified as "SS". The Galicia Division (which you are referring to) was formed to fight communists. Its war record was examined, ad nauseum, and there is absolutely no evidence it committed war crimes.
Finally, Ukrainian collaboration in WWII has been studied a great deal. It is no higher than collaboration in other Allied nations. Three million Ukrainians were sent to Germany as slave laborers. Ten million Ukrainians were killed by the Germans. Many, by being burned alive in their villages.
Some collaboration.
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