From a short term Ezra mission trip in April 2007: Two survivors of Babi Yar talked with us. Raya (69 yrs. old) said that people always ask her why people went to be shot? She said that they thought that they were going to Babi Yar train station for transfer and were told that if they did not go, they would be shot, so they went. Her grandmother was carrying her and kept saying, “I am Russian, I am Russian.” She ran with Raya (about 3 yrs old at the time) across the street to a cemetery. Soldiers shot at them. They could not chase after them as the soldiers had to stay with the massed group. Raya and her grandmother hid in the graveyard until nightfall, went back to their neighborhood and were helped by their neighbors for two years until the end of the war.
Vesilly (70 yrs old) said that because of Babi Yar, he had lost his childhood, his Jewishness, and his parents. A rich Jewish culture was destroyed, and cannot be replaced. He said that the janitors were told to make lists of the Jews in their area. 170,000 were listed. 10,000 managed to survive. The second day the Nazi’s occupied Kiev; they blew up the government buildings in the center of Kiev, and killed 3,000 Jews. Vesilly's story was that his nanny had fallen and his head was gashed on some barbed wire. They were just pushed aside and left. For two weeks they went around city. They could not go home. He had to go to an orphanage. Nina, a doctor, gathered 70 children in an orphanage. The older children collected left over food from restaurants, and helped feed the smaller children. After the war he went to a children’s home and was adopted by a doctor.
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