(Jewish Group) 80 years after Babyn Yar Holocaust massacre, a German lawyer seeks trial...

80 years after Babyn Yar Holocaust massacre, a German lawyer seeks trial for last living alleged perpetrator

Eighty years ago, a ravine in the north of what is now Ukraine’s capital city turned into a bloodbath as Nazis, aided by local collaborators, shot tens of thousands of Jews to death.

For two days at the end of September 1941, Ukrainian collaborators brought more than 33,000 Jews to the hills of Kyiv’s Babyn Yar ravine, where soldiers in Adolf Hitler’s army executed group after group of defenseless victims — children, as well as women and men of all ages.

The victims were shot with machine guns into pits. After none remained standing, the perpetrators would jump into the pit with their victims to finish off the dying and those pretending to be dead. Then the bodies were buried and a new group of victims brought to stand atop the fresh, thin layer of earth covering their brethren.

The 80th anniversary of the massacre, the first mass shooting in what is known today as the “Holocaust of bullets,” is eliciting a wave of commemorations, including a ceremony in Israel to honor a survivor and a memorial coin in Ukraine, where Nazi collaborators are increasingly being celebrated alongside their victims.

It is also reinvigorating a German lawyer’s mission to bring to justice a man he says may be the last Babyn Yar perpetrator alive, a 99-year-old German man named Herbert Waller.

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