Ukraine this week marks the anniversary of one of World War Two’s most notorious wartime massacres, reflecting on a key stage in Nazi Germany’s plan to kill off European Jewry and on persisting anti-Semitism at home. �

The ex-Soviet state is holding events to honour more than 33,000 victims shot and tossed into pits over two days in September 1941 in Babiy Yar, a ravine now in the Kiev suburbs.�

The focal point will be a forum on Wednesday, hosted by President Viktor Yushchenko, on the Nazi “final solution” and its ramifications today, especially in post-Soviet society.�

Kiev’s 150,000-strong Jewish community, swollen by refugees, was summoned to a gathering point on September 29, 10 days after the Nazis rolled practically unhindered into the city.�

Jews in Ukraine and Russia were long used to pogroms under the tsar. Living in a closed society and all but ignorant of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies, most carried prized possessions on the mistaken notion that the Germans would resettle them.�

“My grandmother had me in one arm and her passport in the other. She kept crossing herself and crying ‘I’m Russian!” said Raisa Maistrenko, three at the time and half-Jewish and now one of a handful of survivors still alive.�

“A local policeman said everyone there was Jewish. He tried to hit me with his rifle butt. My grandmother protected me with her shoulder and we fell to the ground together.”�

Maistrenko,�fled in the confusion with her grandmother to a cemetery, hid in in bushes through the night before stumbling home after dawn.

RNA