I hate coming back to “bubble and squeek” topics, but something caught my attention today:
"KIEV - Sixty-five years after 33,000 Jews were massacred in the Babi Yar ravine in Ukraine, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem and several Jewish organizations are teaming up to identify the approximately 1 million Jews killed in the former Soviet Union during World War II.
As researchers interview the last surviving witnesses and examine old documents, the question they hear repeated over and over again is: “Where have you been until now?”
A state memorial ceremony will be held tomorrow at Babi Yar, near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, where German and Ukrainian soldiers and policemen carried out the mass murder. But it is not clear exactly whose deaths are being commemorated, since more than 90 percent of the Jews killed there have yet to be identified.
Yad Vashem has recorded the names of some 3,000 Jews killed at Babi Yar. While it also has the names of some 7,000 Jews from Kiev who were killed in the Holocaust, the museum’s researchers don’t know where they died or were buried.
The incomplete records stem from the fact that at the time of the massacre, only the number of dead was reported, and not their identifying details. Other Einsatzgruppen squads - mobile killing units that murdered about 1 million Jews between 1941 and 1943 in the western Soviet Union, northern Romania and eastern Poland - operated in a similar way.
The project to identify Soviet victims, which began on Holocaust Remembrance Day, in April, has so far collected several thousand “pages of testimony” filled out by the relatives and acquaintances of those killed in the Holocaust and a few dozen lists of victims’ names and memory books written by survivors of various cities and towns.
The project was initiated by Yossi Hollander, an Israeli entrepreneur in the hi-tech sector who lives in the United States. Yad Vashem is working with Jewish organizations that operate in the former Soviet Union and Jewish communities in the area.
Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem directorate, said the museum had the names of more than 90 percent of Jewish victims killed in western and central Europe, 35 percent to 40 percent of those killed in Romania, Hungary and Poland - and only about 20 percent of those killed in the former Soviet Union.
Some 600,000 Jews were killed during the Holocaust in Ukraine alone, and some 300,000 in Belarus, according to Yad Vashem.
Researchers have gleaned the names of the victims from records kept by the Germans as well as pages of testimony and record books. Yad Vashem has collected about 3.5 million pages of testimony so far, of which only a few hundred thousand relate to people from the former Soviet Union.
One reason for the paucity of information on Soviet victims is that Yad Vashem has focused on collecting pages of testimony in Israel and Western countries, while very little has been done to retrieve data from witnesses and survivors living in the former Soviet Union."
Source: Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel, Israeli News Source
I cannot help myself and I compared this with the first information from our “infamous”, “derailed”, “drifting out” thread:
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3884
"Ukraine Nazi Massacre Remembered
Ukrainian, Jewish Leaders Gather at Babi Yar Ravine to Mark 65th Anniversary of Nazi Massacre
By NATASHA LISOVA
The Associated Press
KIEV, Ukraine - Bells gently tolled as Ukrainian and foreign dignitaries on Wednesday commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Nazi massacre of Jews at the Babi Yar ravine, placing flower-encircled candles at the foot of a giant monument to the tens of thousands of victims.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Israeli President Moshe Katsav led the solemn procession behind an honor guard of Ukrainian soldiers carrying a garland of white flowers.
Hundreds of mourners many Jews who had traveled from around the world watched, clutching their own offerings of red and white carnations. Some carried small stones, which Jews traditionally leave at grave sites as a sign of respect.
“For me, it is not just memories,” said Dina Maydanyk, 74, whose three brothers died in the Holocaust. “It’s a horror.”
The massacre began on Sept. 29, 1941, when Soviet Kiev’s Nazi occupiers ordered all Jews to report to a ravine on the outskirts of town.
The Jews thought they would be taken to a ghetto, and Kiev residents recalled their Jewish neighbors lugging their most valuable belongings out to the ravine.
But when they got there, the Jews were forced to undress and gather in lines along the ravine’s steep embankment. There, the Nazis machine-gunned down the crowd, killing at least 33,771 over 48 hours. In the ensuing months, the number of people killed at Babi Yar grew to more than 100,000.
“I saw how the Germans were laughing and joking when they looked at the people they were bringing to their death,” said Nina Isayeva, 82, who came to pay tribute to the victims. “What barbarians they were.”
Moshe Kantor, founder of the World Holocaust Forum that is organizing the events, said that the world’s silence after Babi Yar emboldened the Nazis to embark on their “final solution” of death camps that ultimately killed six million European Jews.
The exact death toll at Babi Yar remains unknown. The Nazi executioners recorded the number of Jews killed in the first two days, but there are no exact records of subsequent killings. In 1943, as the Red Army approached to free Ukraine, the Nazis ordered Jewish prisoners to dig up the corpses and burn them.
For decades, the Soviets maintained silence about what happened in Babi Yar. Only after Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko drew international attention to the massacre with his 1961 poem “Babi Yar,” did the Soviets put up a towering monument of twisted and tormented figures. It did not mention Jews, however. It wasn’t until 1991, as the Soviet Union began to crumble, that Jews were allowed to erect a menorah near another part of the ravine.
Today, the ravine is part of a popular park, and Jewish leaders say they are frustrated that children still play soccer and couples picnic where tens of thousands were massacred.
Wednesday’s commemorations were being held at the Soviet memorial, although the Jewish community held an earlier private ceremony at the menorah across the park."
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
I do not comment at all!
I don’t even expect rational explanation…
Please look at the figures!
Lancer44
P.S.
Just for Chevan - “bubble and squeek” mean leftovers from yesterday’s dinner, fried and eaten for next day lunch.
L44
