Babi Yar

I read this book in the original Russian. I could not put it down until I read the whole thing. As far as truthfulness I have absolutely no doubt, since his accounts are the same that I have heard from my own grandparents who fought in and survived in the war. To the reviewer below - Jeannette DuPree (South Carolina), what do the modern historians doubt? The thousands of victims (including the immediate members of my family) of German brutality? It's revisionist lying.

I first read this book in high school as a shelf clearing library rat. It was not recommended, it was not widely known, it just sat on a shelf gathering dust. As far as I could tell, I was the first person to check this book out of my high school's library....books used to have cards glued to the back page where you signed your name...this one had no signatures. I read "Babi Yar" 3 times in the next 2 weeks and was stunned at the inhumanity of people towards people. I actually had trouble sleeping for a while. I didn't run across this book again for another 25 years. It kind of jumped at me from the shelf at my local library. It offered the same brutal emotional clubbing at 41 that I had experienced at 16. No different. How horrible can we actually be as humans? Pretty damn horrible it appears. The progessive rape of Kiev (et al) by Stalin, the Nazis, and Stalin AGAIN is a mostly overlooked story. This one tells it quite well. Music lovers should listen to Al Stewart's "Roads to Moscow" for a somewhat hurried reference.

I did read baby yar long ago but I never forgot it . If I had to choose 10 books this one would be in the list. The book does tell the story of the massacre of jews in baby yar , near kiev during world war II. The author does portray in a realistic way the miseries of war. Once I started reading it I just could not stop. I did read it in 2 days.

This book is a documented portrait of barbaric inhumanity that took place during the holocaust at a ravine called Babi Yar. It is a place that over 33,000 jews were murdered and buried dead or alive. This book is told from the eyes of a young non- jewish boy who lived in Kiev and witnessed the inhumane massacre that took place outside of his city. The book is well written and imposibble to put down. After reading this book, one can understand more about the holocaust and about the chilling and incomprehensible behavior against the jewish nation.

This is an important book which I hope will be put back in print soon. The story of the Ukrainian occupation during WWII, as well as Babi Yar death camp are fascinating, if also horrifying. The book covers a theatre of the war that is seldom covered in such detail.The honesty is the most interesting part. The author, a 12-year-old boy at the time, (and NOT Jewish), had no reason to fabricate, and with an innocence that makes it clear he isn't trying to propogandize, just reports the horrors he sees. The book also includes some later gathered (when the author was grown up) interviews with survivors of Babi Yar death camp which are even more harrowing.The most fascinating part of the copy that I have is that it BOLDs the portions of the book that were edited out by the Russian censors, before the book was published in the Soviet Union. It is interesting to notice what the censors chose to cut out, as much as what they chose to leave in!Well worth finding in a used book store, if you can.