“The Shooting of the Jews Is a Fact”: Kyiv’s Non-Jewish Population and the Babyn Yar Massacre, September – October 1941
“The Shooting of the Jews Is a Fact”:Kyiv’s Non-Jewish Population and the Babyn Yar Massacre, September – October 1941

Summary/Abstract: Based on a wide range of textual and audiovisual sources, in Ukrainian, Russian, and German, from the war period and the postwar decades, the article offers the first systematic attempt to trace how, in September and October 1941, Ukrainians and other non-Jewish persons in German-occupied Kyiv thought about, and interacted with, the Holocaust. From a broad look that actively seeks out varieties – both in non-Jewish perceptions of Jews, and in behavior related to them, it emerges that there were cases of non-German involvement in persecution and murder, and that many locals had antisemitic sentiments, with varying degrees of intensity. At the same time, however, no evidence is found that in the weeks under study, large numbers of Kyivans actively supported, in word or deed, the persecution and murder of Kyiv’s Jews, be it at Babyn Yar or elsewhere in the city. These findings support the notion that there was a major difference in the stances of non-Jewish residents towards Jews east and west of the former Molotov-Ribbentrop line.

• Details
• Contents