Today at 15:06
A few kilometers away from Kyiv, on the outskirts of what was once Bykivnia village, there is a mass grave containing the remains of the victims of Stalin’s repressions.
The Bykivnia forest was used as a mass unmarked burial site for five years, from 1937 until 1941. Here, the Soviet secret police disposed of thousands of executed soviet citizens.
Every year on the eve of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions, the employees of the memorial complex and the relatives of the killed, clean the unmarked graves.
Various sources put the number of people buried here from 100 to 120 thousand people. Each year more than ten thousand people visit the complex, which is around 200 hectares.
The caretakers of the graves complain that sometimes visitors leave a lot of trash.
The number of people executed by the Soviet police and buried in these graves is still undetermined. Archaeologists and historians have studied only 1.5 hectares out of five. The last archaeological excavations took place here in 2012.
The deputy director of the memorial complex said that people were executed by shooting.
Few days ago, the memorial complex appealed to relatives of those who were repressed in the 1930s and 1940s, asking them to share documents and photos, as they continue to investigate the victims of Stalin’s terror in Kyiv.
