Atrocities in the Ukraine

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"My mother's family, her brothers, and her parents were taken to outside of Kiev at Babi Yar-- where they were made to dig their own graves. And were lined up and shot in the back of the head.

Both of her sisters survived the Holocaust because they left with a Zionist organization in the early thirties to Israel.

My parents ' determination was to make sure that I and my sister Ann--and later on of course my sister Ethel that was later born in Austria--that we were safe. My father’s main objective was to get out alive. Get his family out alive.

Editor's Note: Babi Yar is a ravine to the northwest of the city of Kiev. Many Jews fled Kiev in advance of the German occupation in 1941. During the first days of German occupation, the Soviet military set off explosions destroying the Nazi headquarters in the city. The Germans used the explosion as an excuse to murder the remaining Jews of Kiev at Babi Yar. Many of these were women, children, and the elderly who were unable to flee."