Babyn Yar is the largest mass grave for victims of the Holocaust. Up to an estimated 100,000 Jewish people were marched from the city of Kyiv by the Nazis on September 29 and 30, 1941, and shot in the Babyn Yar ravine [UQ1].
During the following two years of German occupation, numerous other people were killed in this ravine, including more Jewish victims, as well as political prisoners and resistance fighters [UQ2]. To cover up these horrific crimes, the Nazis began "Sonderaktion 1005" in 1942, forcing prisoners in a specially constructed concentration camp to retrieve and burn the bodies from Babyn Yar [UQ2]. A memorial to the victims was erected on September 29, 1976, the 35th anniversary of the murders. The ravine itself had already been leveled by the Soviet authorities in 1962.