The massacre at Babi Yar outside of Kiev, Ukraine was one of the first and bloodiest events in the Holocaust. More than 33,000 Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in the single largest killing of the period. The Nazis, after overwhelming the Soviet defense forces, set up a puppet government that was rife with Ukrainian collaborators; mostly from western Ukraine, which saw the Soviet Union as oppressive and tyrannical. Dr. Lower explained that while many Ukrainian nationalists saw the Nazi invasion as liberation from the Soviet Union, the Jewish population understood all too well, via a mass exodus of Jews from Poland to Ukraine in 1939, that the Nazis had no intention to improve the lot of the local population. Nazi ideology, dependent on the idea of lebensraum, regarded the beautifully lush landscapes of Ukraine as a “German playground.” The Nazis believed that, over time, the entire land needed to be depopulated in order to make room for the German volk to recline in luxury and peace with the soil of the land. While these designs, according to Dr. Lower, were incidentally targeted towards the Ukrainian population, they were specifically targeted towards Ukraine’s Jewish population. Dr. Lower’s thesis in the study of Babi Yar is that the ideological “final solution” to Europe’s “Jewish’ Question” was conceived in Berlin and implemented at Babi Yar. Babi Yar represents the first application, and the first success, of Nazi genocidal attitudes towards a concentrated Jewish population.
On September 29, the Jewish population was ordered by the Nazis and the Ukrainian collaborators to report to Babi Yar for “deportation.” Rumors abounded among the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Kiev that the Jews were going to be forcibly deported to Palestine. These rumors undoubtedly aided in the complicity of the local Jews to follow the instructions of the authorities, but also add to the horror of the Nazis true intentions on the matter. This kind of deception only underscores and adds another dimension of evil to the massacre itself. As the Jews were ushered, one group at a time, into the ravine at Babi Yar they were forced to leave their belongings in the hands of the authorities whom, we are told, rifled through them for valuables to confiscate. As the Jews were summarily executed and dumped into the ravine, which acted as a natural “mass grave” for the dead, the local residents of Kiev reacted to the news and reports with complete ambivalence. There are some surviving records, clearly in the minority according to Dr. Lower, that demonstrate an inkling of horror among some of the local residents, but the vocal majority of Kiev were only too pleased to see the violent and destructive energies of the Nazis focused so diligently on anyone but the Ukrainians. Dr. Lower also gave clear examples of Ukrainians encouraging Nazis and local police to target helpless Jews that were unable to make it to the rally point near Babi Yar, as in the case of the old men at the local synagogue. Ideological collaboration and anti-Semitism were as much a motivation for Ukrainian involvement as utility and indifference.
Perhaps one of Dr. Lower’s strongest arguements involves the ideological commitment of the Nazis to the extermination of the Jewish population of Europe. A central piece of infrastructure in achieving Ukrainian lebensraum for Germans was the construction of the autobahn from Germany to the eastern front. The Germans forced a small portion of the Jewish population in the Ukraine, as well as other parts of Europe, to work on building this important infrastructure. However, as Babi Yar illustrates only so well, the Nazis preferred to kill off the Jews rather than use them as an important source of labor to meet their ultimate ideological goals. In other words, killing the Jews was more important than any other stated goal for the Nazis.
According to Dr. Lower, it was the success of Babi Yar, both in the practical sense of killing Jews and in the intangible sense of local reaction to the killings, which emboldened Hitler to continue similar and increasingly systematic killings all over the rest of Europe. In these killings, from Babi Yar to Auschwitz, Hitler’s legacy is revealed: more than facilitating the ascension of the “master race,” more than providing Germans lebensraum, more than restoring imperial prestige to the proud Fatherland, more than personal ambition to rule Europe, Hitler’s legacy and ultimate goal was to destroy the Jewish people.
[1] Lower, Wendy. “Babi Yar and the Holocaust: New Sources, New Perspectives.” Burton C. Einspruch Holocaust Lecture Series. University of Texas at Dallas. Richardson, Texas, 15 February 2009.
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