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SBU publishes list of some of the Victims of the Terror buried at Bykivnya

15.05.2009   
The SBU [Security Service] has made public a list with 14,191 names of those whose last earthly remains lie buried in the Bykivnya Forest just outside Kyiv

As Ukraine prepares to mark Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression on 17 May, the Security Service [SBU] has made public a list with 14,191 names of those whose last earthly remains lie buried in the Bykivnya Forest just outside Kyiv. 

The list is available on the SBU website at: http://ssu.gov.ua/sbu/control/uk/publish/article;jsessionid=DD8489676EA587745E66E8109D8D9B58?art_id=86727&cat_id=39574

Work on archival documents has confirmed that from 1937 to 1941 people were executed (shot), and their bodies were brought to a special location near the village settlement of Bykivnya. This “spetsobiekt” had been carefully planned in advance, and was under the strict guard of the NKVD.

There is documentary evidence that Bykivnya holds the last remains of thousands of victims. Estimates over recent years have spoken of around 100 thousand however the SBU gives no exact figures for the likely total number.

SBU reports that they have established 18 places where victims of repression were buried in other parts of Ukraine.

In all cases the burial sites were concealed with the areas having cement poured in or being levelled off with new trees planted. After reports did leak out about Bykivnya, the Soviet authorities claimed for many years that the common grave held the remains of victims of the Nazis.

In Kharkiv the story was that the people buried were either German deserters or people who had died from dangerous infectious diseases, the aim being to frighten people from even looking.

In Khmelnytsky the Soviet authorities built the central department store on the burial site; a park of culture and recreation in Vinnytsa, and others.

By no means all burial sites are known.  

More information about the burials at Bykivnya can be found here: http://khpg.org/1179733064

Вічна пам’ять - Eternal Memory

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