Ebenezer Operation Exodus - History of the Jewish People in the Former Soviet Union

Babi Yar

Babi Yar symbolises the terror of the Holocaust. On two late September days in 1941, eight days after the Germans had taken Kiev, the city's Jews were herded to a steeply wooded ravine in the suburbs, forced to the edge of it in columns and machine-gunned by SS troops and Ukrainian militia. A total of 33,771 men, women and children fell dead and dying in the ravine, which was then covered with earth. Until the Germans left, more Jews were regularly slaughtered there and it is believed that Babi Yar is a mass grave for over 100,000 of them.

Ruvin Shtein will remember the summons to Babi Yar word for word 'until my dying day'. Notices said, 'All Yids in the city of Kiev and its suburbs must present themselves on Monday 29th September by 8 a.m. at the junction of Melnikova Street and Dokhtarievskaya Street (besides the cemetery). They must bring their papers, money, valuables and warm clothing. Any Yid not obeying this order and who is found in another place will be shot.'

It was a warm autumn day and the trees were still green, recalled Ruvin, who was 15 at the time. From the early hours a stream of people walked the streets to their appointment with death, including Ruvin, his mother and six-year-old sister. Everyone believed they would live right up to the last moment. Then, near the cemetery, they were organised into columns, had their clothing removed, their documents burned and valuables thrown into a heap. Subjected to the vilest insults, they were herded into covered lorries and driven to Babi Yar wailing hysterically.

But Ruvin Shtein did not die. Separated from his mother and sister, and forced to walk the final part of the way with a group of men and youths, he saw his chance to escape by leaping unnoticed into a drainage ditch and hiding in the pipe running under the road. There he stayed until dark. For the next two years he was on the run, afraid of being discovered and betraying those who helped him.

Jews were massacred in Odessa a week after the invaders took the city on 23rd October 1941. After a partisan bomb went off, killing Romanian officers, 19,000 Jews were herded into an area near the port, sprayed with petrol and burned alive. Another 16,000 were tied together and shot in a nearby village. Those still alive were forced into warehouses and machine-gunned through the walls. Three of the buildings were burned down, the remaining one finished off by artillery fire.

The remaining Jewish people were sent to concentration camps to join thousands of others from Ukraine and Moldova. There they were executed or died of illness, starvation and cold.

It is estimated that 60,000 Jewish people were killed in Odessa during the German occupation. Massacres in Nikolaev resulted in an even number - 94,000. In all, there were massacres at 633 places in Ukraine. Polish and Ukrainian partisans killed Jewish people as well; they were said to hate Jews as much as Nazis.

The Gulag

Many Jewish people were among those who died in the Gulag - the Soviet system of forced labour camps - especially in the Kolyma peninsula, which has been called Stalin's Auschwitz. GULAG is an acronym which, translated from the Russian, means Main Camp Administration. But Gulag also became the term used to describe the whole system of Soviet forced labour spread throughout a vast network of camps across the length and breadth of the USSR.

Prisoners in the camps, which were simply named after the distance they were force-marched to from the transit centres (23 km camp, 72 km camp, 220 km camp.), worked 14 hours a day on 700 grams of bread and a bowl of cabbage soup. Production quotas, especially for mining gold, were set high and many died trying to achieve them. The alternative was a reduction of food. Prisoners fell so far behind the quotas that eventually all that was left to do was to crawl out of sight and die of starvation and cold. Many inmates were shot when they got too weak to work. A lot of them were buried under the roads they helped to build - hence the Kolyma highway is known as the 'road of bones'.

Official Soviet persecution of Jewish people continued after the end of the Second World War, apart from a brief lull when Stalin died in 1953. This included long forced labour camp sentences for hundreds of Jews accused of "economic speculation" in 1956. In 1958 and '59 anti-Semitic leaflets were distributed throughout the USSR and Jewish shops and homes were attacked. Sixty-eight Jews were shot for 'economic crimes' between 1961 and 1963.