The infamous Baba Yar massacre took place on September 29-30, 1941, in a ravine outside the city of Kiev in the Ukraine. Over 33,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered in the space of 48 hours by the Einsatzgruppen and Security Police, making this the worst shooting incident of the Holocaust. The massacre was carried out in retaliation for the deaths of German soldiers killed in a series of explosions and fires which was blamed on the Jews.
“There are events, tragedies, the enormity of which make all words futile and of which silence tells incomparably more — the awesome silence of thousands of people. Perhaps we, too, should keep silent and only meditate. But silence says a lot only when everything that could have been said has already been said. If there is still much to say, or if nothing has yet been said, then silence becomes a partner to falsehood and enslavement. We must, therefore, speak — and to speak whenever we can, taking advantage of all opportunities, for they come so infrequently.”
— Address made at Babi Yar by Ukrainian writer Ivan Dzuiba in 1966