Babi Yar - Concealment of The Crimes

Concealment of The Crimes

Before the Nazis retreated from Kiev, they attempted to conceal their atrocities. Paul Blobel, who was in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the Sonderaktion 1005 in eliminating its traces. For six weeks from August to September 1943, more than 300 chained prisoners were forced to exhume and burn the corpses (using local headstones as bricks to build ovens) and scatter the ashes on farm land in the vicinity. To this day many Ukrainians will not eat cabbage grown on those farms.