me.
[...] I freed myself, got up, and took my unconscious daughter in my arms. I walked along ravines. [...] Crawling over ravines, I made my way to the village of Babi Yar.'
She also provides this sideline story from the place of horror:[36]
'I'll never forget one girl, Sara; she was about fifteen years old. I can't describe how beautiful she was. Her mother was [...] killed with a rifle butt [...]. Five or six Germans stripped [the girl] naked, but I didn't see what happened after that. I didn't see.'
• Why did this witness not arrive at Babi Yar until after dark? On what day, anyway? Many witnesses would have noticed the great crowd of victims-to-be between the time of their morning gathering at the street corner and their much later arrival at the undressing-place. Where are all these witnesses?
• The Jews allegedly had to report on the morning of September 29. But the murder took place not only on the 29th, but on September 30 as well. Wiehn[37] even claims that 'the death march lasted three days and three nights.' Where did the tens of thousands spend the night (or nights)?
• According to this version, the victims were first stripped naked and then, about 50 meters away, relieved of documents, money and jewelry. Was the procedure changed every few minutes?! Why has no other witness mentioned that the victims' teeth were checked? How much time would that have taken?
• Did the Kyiv Jews understand orders given in German?
• How can the German soldier have stood on Yelena Knysh if she was covered by bodies? How much time would it take to climb over mountains of bodies in order to kill anyone still living with a bayonet? Were victims not buried alive after all?
• Where exactly is the village of Babi Yar??? How likely is the story of the girl Sara's forcible stripping by five or six Germans, perhaps even within the range of machine gun scatter?
10. One single eyewitness was permitted (or ordered) by the Soviets to testify abroad. In 1968 Dina Pronitscheva testified in Darmstadt in the trial of 11 members of Einsatzkommando 4a. The case files are kept under lock and key!
Philip Shabecoff, reporter for the New York Times, wrote:[38]
'When the shooting stopped, the walls of the ravine were dynamited and the rubble was shovelled over the bodies of the men, women and children who lay in it. Some were still alive when buried.'
What A. Kuznetsov learned from Pronitscheva and incorporated into his novel Babi Yar[39] does not agree with other testimony, for example:
'[...] machine-gunning of the Jews by German soldiers across the width of the Babi Yar Ravine throughout the night, half in darkness, illuminated by a small bonfire.'
But the matter becomes even more confusing when one reads Dina Pronitscheva's account in Wiehn's opus [40]. Significant differences in her recorded statement at the Darmstadt Trial are added in parentheses, with the note S:
'On September 28, 1941, an order from the German authorities was posted throughout the city [...] about 8 o'clock in the morning [S: at 8 o'clock] near Djechtjarewska and Melnik Streets [S: Djachterowskaja and Melnikow] [...] my parents and my sister went to the meeting place [...] [S: It was very hot.] I accompanied them and then intended to return to my family [...] Large groups of people. [...] They were accompanied by Ukrainians, Russians, and citizens of other nationalities [...]. The streets [...] leading to the cemetery area were totally overcrowded with people. As we neared the gathering place we noticed the encirclement by German soldiers and officers [...] policemen, too. [S: Tank riders.] [S: We went up a hill:] [...] led us in groups of about 40-50 into a so-called 'Corridor' about 10 ft. wide which was formed by Germans standing close together on either side, with sticks, rubber truncheons and dogs [...]. Everyone was brutally beaten by the Germans. [S: Many fell down and were trampled to a thin pulp.] [At] the place at the end of the 'Corridor' [...] policemen stripped them [...] down to their underwear. [S: stark naked.] The beaten and stripped people were taken in groups to the ravine of Babi Yar [...]. They led us to a ledge over the ravine and began to shoot us with submachine guns. [S: machine guns.] [S: entirely different version: a German soldier offered her freedom in return for sex. She claimed to be a Russian, proved it by means of an employment book and union card, was then sent up a hill and not driven into the ravine with others until evening, on the orders of a German officer.] [...] when it was my turn I threw myself into the ravine alive [S: jumped into the pit.] [...]. Here, too, Germans and policemen went around and shot or beat to death anyone who was still alive [...]. One of the policemen or Germans turned me over with his foot, [...] stepped on my hand and my breast [S: he beat me] [...]. Then they began to [...] cover the bodies with soil and sand. [S: I remained lying under the soil.] I couldn't breathe anymore, freed myself of the earth with one hand [S: my right hand, on which the soldier stood, gave me trouble] and crawled to the edge of the ravine [...]. On the second day I saw the Germans chase an old woman and a boy of about 5 or 6 years, who had fled from the ravine. The old woman was shot, they stabbed the boy with a knife. About 30 ft. away from this spot seven Germans came along, leading two young girls. They raped them there and then stabbed them to death.'
• Re. Shabecoff's report in the New York Times: who drilled the blast holes, where did the equipment come from, and why are there once again no witnesses to this considerable amount of work? Why is no trace of any of this visible on the air photos?
• Re. Kuznetsov: they shot across the ravine at night? Wouldn't that endanger even their own people?
• Re. what Wiehn[7] saw fit to publish, and re. Pronitscheva's testimony in Darmstadt, we have the following questions:
• About 8 o'clock or at 8 o'clock? Incorrect street names from a Kyiv resident? Why is her 'weather report' entirely wrong? How can one return to one's family when they had just been transported? How were the Ukrainians, Russians and citizens of other (which?) nationalities separated from the doomed? Where is the hill? Why did all the other witnesses forget the 'Beating Corridor'? What are Tank riders?
• Stripped down to their underwear, or stark naked? Employment book and union card retained even though she was stark naked? Ledge over the ravine? Ravine or pit? A hill? Submachine guns or machine guns? Has anyone ever tried to turn, with his foot, a person wedged between other bodies? The soldier beat a girl he presumed was dead? What presence of mind a girl must have, not to shriek or to react in some other way when someone steps on her hand and breast, or beats her! Why did no one notice that she freed herself? Not even the soldier standing on her right hand? How daring must a girl be, to still observe events near the site of the crime two days later - and how insensitive to the cold, considering that she is either in her underwear or entirely naked. How likely is the tale of the proposition and of the girls who were first raped and then stabbed? Sexual intercourse with Jews was considered defilement of the blood, and was forbidden. Why did she understand German in Babi Yar, but not a word of that language in Darmstadt? Might her job - actress in a puppet theater - explain her facility at confabulation?
11. Ernst Klee, Willi Dre?en and V. Rie?[41] have culled the testimony of three witnesses - Hofer, Kurt Werner and Anton Heidborn - from the files held at the Central Office in Ludwigsburg; these files are not, however, made available to critical researchers.
According to Hofer, the Jews had to undress and neatly stack their clothes at a spot 500 ft. from the ravine (according to Werner it was a kilometer, about ??? of a mile). Then the naked victims were led into a ravine which according to Hofer was 500 ft. long, 100 ft. wide and 50 ft. deep, whereas Werner claims it was 1,300 ft. long, 260 ft. wide at the top and 33 ft. wide at the bottom, and 33 ft. deep. According to Hofer, two or three narrow passages led into the ravine; according to Werner the victims were led to the edge of the hollow and then ran down the slopes of their own accord.
Hofer maintains that there was only one marksman at each end of the ravine; Werner tells of a total of 12. Hofer testified that a 'packer' stood at each end and placed each victim onto the previous bodies. Then each was shot by a member of the police, with a submachine gun, per a bullet in the neck. The children were shot together with their mothers.
