Ukraine marks 70 years since Babi Yar massacre of Jews

Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych is to pay tribute Monday to victims of the Nazi massacre of Jews at Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, 70 years after the deadliest shooting massacre of the Holocaust. The Nazis murdered 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar between September 29-30, 1941 in an atrocity that has only been properly commemorated in recent years.
"It is difficult to fully comprehend the events that occurred in Babi Yar. It is difficult to find the words to express all the depth of our condolences and sorrow," Yanukovych said in comments released by his press service. "More and more, time is increasing our distance from these horrible events. But the memory is alive," he added ahead of the ceremony where he will place flowers at the monument to the victims. Shortly after Nazi forces pushed the Soviet authorities out of Kiev in 1941 and occupied the city, they ordered its entire remaining Jewish population to assemble on the pretext of being resettled.
The Nazi occupiers blamed the Jews of Kiev for a sequence of explosions that in fact had been set off by remaining agents of the Soviet NKVD or were time bombs left by the Red Army before their departure. The resettlement story was a carefully-hidden lie. The Nazis marched the Jews to the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of the city where they were shot dead. The massacre was the subject of the revered early 1960s 13th Symphony of Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich who set to music the poem "Babi Yar" by Yevgeny Yevtushenko.