The war brought so much grief and tears that there was more for each person than for entire generations. The world is changeable, at times ruthless and cruel. In the period “when - as Anna Akhmatova said - smiling, only dead, glad to calm”, what people had to worry about was not described by a single, or a thousand words. Fascist ideology was based on praise and faith in the great calling of the Aryan race, which led to genocide. The victims of this terrible phenomenon became such only because their political, racial, national, religious motives were not the same as those who wanted their extermination. Memorials of the victims of the fascist genocide are scattered around the world, one of which is located in Ukraine, in Kharkov, in a place called Drobitsky Yar. Fascism "awarded" humanity with the blackest periods of history, terrifying memories and frightening pages of books.
Drobitsky Yar - the wound of Kharkov
The evil of fascism during the Second World War spread to vast territories. The Soviet Union was no exception. The main goal of the Nazis was not only to win the war, to get territories and resources, but also to wipe out those who, in their opinion, were not worthy to live with them on the same planet. International Holocaust Remembrance Day is celebrated worldwide on January twenty-seventh. This date again revives in memory those terrible events that forever left an imprint in history and hearts. Drobitsky Yar, Kharkov … The history of this place is not particularly condescending on the part of the fascist invaders.
In the severe winter cold of 1941-1942, the land of this Yar took over more than thirty thousand corpses of local residents, most of whom were Jews. This is one of the biggest mass graves of the victims of Nazism, one of the most serious wounds that Kharkov region and the whole world received.
The story of the massacre
The Nazi leg appeared in Kharkov in December 1941. After the occupation of this territory, an order was given to resettle all local Jews in the eastern part of the city and brought to the knowledge of the entire population. The crowds of people who created the human river, for two days - from December 15 to 16 - walked across the avenue, carrying some valuable things, some children, some old grandfather. Everyone understood that the cold barracks of factories were not their ultimate goal. Each of the crowd went to death. In order to save their children, women pushed them out of this condemned mass of people in the hope that the locals would save them. Unfortunately, few people wanted to share the grief of others in those days, because everyone had their own.
In small rooms, people could not even sit down, they had to sleep while standing, because they were packed as much as possible with suicide bombers. From time to time, several hundred people were taken out of these barracks in order to take their lives on the outskirts of the city where Drobitsky Yar is located, brutally shooting at two previously dug pits. A few days after this crime, the earth did not dry up with blood and moved with the moans of the still alive.
The liberation of Kharkov
After the Kharkov region was liberated in 1943, a special commission was created to establish the facts of what was happening in Drobitsky Yar. The Soviet authorities for a long time closed their eyes and ears to this tragedy. For more than one year, the hearts of those who were not indifferent to the thousands of those killed were torn apart not only from horror and sadness, but also from the fact that everyone pretended that life in Kharkov flowed in a stream without any obstacles. When the rainy season began in the post-war period, irrefutable evidence of the massacre began to appear on the surface of the Drobitsky Yar - people began to find human skulls and pigtails with red bows.
The actions of the Soviet authorities
It is impossible to imagine how a person feels, seeing how the rain erodes the grave and again, as if with a knife, reveals a memory. It was very difficult to ensure that the authorities took measures to bury the dead, but local residents were able to do this with their numerous appeals. Making concessions, the city executive committee singled out two women with shovels who were supposed to bury the ravines. Only a couple of years later, they managed to bury the dead.
A small obelisk was erected next to this burial, on which, as was customary in the Soviet Union, there was not even a mention that the people killed here were Jews. Drobitsky Yar has become a place that is remembered by citizens and which the authorities forgot.
