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Gunker: are you Ukrainian? I leave for Kiev this Monday. Strangely enough, the hotel where I'm staying at seems to favor Italian cuisine over the local delicacies.

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Only 50%, with no knowledge of the culture other than overhearing my father's hideous Polka music and the dishes my mother (and now, myself) cooked. The fact that the hotel prefers Italian is not surprising...

I'm pretty sure that the food in Kiev will suck, but the architecture and history will be amazing.

I wonder if Baba Yar is a tourist destination?

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976748996

"Kyiv contained a Jewish population of 175,000+ in 1941 on the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Nazi forces captured the city in mid-September in less than 2 weeks. It was on the September 29th. & 30th. that 34,000 Jews of the ghetto were brought to the ravine known as Baba Yar. Baba Yar was located in close proximity to the Jewish Cemetary. Baba Yar is the site where men, women & children were mechanically machine-gunned in a 2-day living Hell of execution. In the following months the majority of the remaining Jewish population of the city of Kyiv was brutally & mechanically exterminated.

Called "the most appalling massacre of the war," the mass exterminations at BabaYar is alluded to as a prime example of utter Jewish helplessness in the face of disaster. Very few Jews were able to fight back. They had no weapons, they had no training & they had no leadership. Jews by the 10's of 1000's, with all the pathetic belongings that they could carry, were herded into barbed-wire deliniated areas at the top of the ravine. There they were guarded by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. It was in these barb-wire pens that they were stripped & beaten. When the time was right they were then led in irregular groups down the side of the ravine. The first groups were forced to lie on the ground, face down & were machine-gunned by the Nazis in a steady volley of death."

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"After the initial massacre, the Baba Yar site was converted into a permanent slave labor & extermination camp. It was here that 10's of 1000's of victims from other parts of the Ukraine were sent for extermination. It was then called the Syrets camp. This was name of a close Kyiv sector. Several hundred specifically selected prisoners were kept there at the camp. These technical specialists such as carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, metal workers, elctricians, pipe fitters, machinists, & orher artisans. They were kept to to serve the needs of the SS men & the Ukrainian collaborator-guards. These select workers were usually killed within a month or 2 as they were replaced by new prisoners who continued their duties. Paul von Radomski was nthe Kommandant in charge of the administration & ultimately the killing of these prisoners. Paul von Radomski seemed to crave a reputation for outdoing his sadist colleagues in other camps so he made it a point to keep on killing prisoners on a regular schedule.

Baba Yar is now National Park of Ukraine. The ravine has been filled in, memorials erected to all of those who were murdered there, the Jews, the Rroma (gypsies), Hungarians, Bulgarians, Tartars, Armenians, Ukrianians, captured partisans, homosexuals, priests & others whom the Nazis deemed as being in need of death."

Be sure to take some pictures of this accursed part of the globe, Loop!