Remembering Babi Yar Victims: International Day of The Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps

Yelyzaveta Melanina is 84. For 45 years, she has been coming to the Babi Yar memorial in Kyiv annually to commemorate the people tortured by the Nazi forces. She herself was a prisoner at the Chemnitz concentration camp, but miraculously, managed to survive. Her mother, however, never came back. Yelyzaveta wrote poems in her memory.

Anna Stryzhkova says she was lucky. Only one out of ten children returned from the Nazi camps, and she was among them. Anna was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau on December 4th, 1943. It was discovered through the archive documents of the camp museum.

In the Soviet times, prisoners of Nazi concentration camps were seen as traitors and enemies. The situation changed only in the 1980s.

In 2005, a monument in memory of concentration camp prisoners was opened at the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv, where one of the Nazi camps was situated. Since then, people gather here every year on April 11th to commemorate the victims.

In March, 1945, an armed uprising took place in Buchenwald – the largest Nazi camp. On April 11th, American forces entered it and liberated all the prisoners. Overall, there were 14 thousand concentration camps operating during World War II. They held 18 million prisoners, 11 million of which were killed. 30 thousand people died in the Kyiv concentration camp near Babi Yar.