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1941 September 28, ROUNDUP OF JEWS IN KIEV (Ukraine)
Two thousand notices were posted around Kiev ordering all Jews to appear the next day with documents, warm clothes and valuables. These roundups were known as Aktions and referred to all forced gathering of Jews for the purpose of deportation or extermination. In this case, although rumors were rife that the Jews were being rounded up to be sent to a labor camp, the result of this aktion was the Babi Yar massacres in which, according to German records, 33,771 Jews were slaughtered in a ravine outside of Kiev by SS Colonel Paul Blobel. The massacre is immortalized in Yevgei Yevtushenko's poem "Babi Yar." The monument placed on the site does not mention Jews. After WWII a dance hall was erected on the site of the massacre despite international protests. Flooding caused by severe storms washed away the dance hall before it could be opened, and caused many skeletons of the massacre's victims to be unearthed.rn
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