As of: 10/6/2021 1:40 p.m.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in World War II, the National Socialists shot millions of people right in their place of residence. Federal President Steinmeier thought of the victims today and warned against forgetting.
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier reminded the Ukraine of the German crimes in World War II. He called for a more intense commemoration of the forgotten atrocities in Eastern Europe.
“The locations of National Socialist crimes in the Ukraine are barely recorded on the map of our memories,” said Steinmeier after visiting two memorials in Korjukiwka north of Kiev.
“Remembrance is not only important to remember the events, but also important to give the dead a name,” said Steinmeier. The “blind spots of our memory” should be illuminated. “We must have a common interest with the Ukrainians in sharpening our memories,” said the Federal President.
27 million dead in the Soviet Union
More than 80 years ago – on June 22, 1941 – Germany invaded the Soviet Union during World War II. The communist country recorded the highest number of victims in Europe with 27 million deaths.
Steinmeier named Korjukiwka as one of the forgotten places, where within two days around 6,700 men, women and children fell victim to the largest and most brutal punitive action of the Second World War. The place is located 180 kilometers northeast of Kiev in the Chernihiv region, about 30 kilometers from the Russian border.
Babyn Jar: Largest mass grave in Europe
Steinmeier then spoke at a memorial event in Babyn Yar. On September 29 and 30, 1941, German troops shot 33,771 Jews in the gorge near Kiev within 36 hours. Women, men, children, old people. Meticulously counted – and recorded in reports. A crime that few in Germany know about.
Until the liberation of the Ukrainian capital by the Red Army in November 1943, around 100,000 people had been murdered in Babyn Yar. In order to remove the traces of the mass executions, the Nazis had the bodies excavated and cremated before they withdrew. The gorge is considered to be the largest mass grave in Europe.
When talking about the Holocaust, explains Ruslan Kawatsjuk from the Babyn Yar Memorial Center, most people would think of concentration camps. To extermination camps like Auschwitz. “Unfortunately, it is hardly known that half of the victims of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe did not die in camps, but directly where they lived. They were shot, as in Babyn Yar.”
“Holocaust by Bullets”
It is “a difficult road to come to Babyn Yar as Federal President,” said Steinmeier. As part of the German war of annihilation in Eastern Europe, “bestial crimes and atrocities” had been committed, for which he found it difficult to find words. He spoke of “unspeakable sadness and shame”. For far too long the “Holocaust by bullets” was not properly perceived in its unbelievable extent.
In 2016, the construction of a Holocaust memorial in Babyn Yar to commemorate the 2.5 million murdered Jews in Eastern Europe was announced. However, it is unclear when the work will begin. The project is controversial in Ukraine. Nationalist circles accuse the project of being too close to the neighboring country, ostensibly because of Russian donors. They fear that too much space will be given to the involvement of Ukrainian aid workers in the Holocaust.
With information from Christina Nagel, ARD Studio Moscow
Monstrous crime: 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre
Christina Nagel, ARD Moscow, September 28, 2021 6:30 p.m.