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Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jfl75vnvpy_p60W8Ug3kyttK5Jfg
Israel Marks 70 Years Since Babi Yar Massacre
(AP) Aron Heller - With tears in his eyes, Michael Sidko laid a wreath of flowers at Israel's official Holocaust memorial during a solemn ceremony Thursday marking 70 years since the World War II massacre at Babi Yar outside Kiev, Ukraine. In the two-day killing spree in September 1941, Nazi troops gunned down more than 33,000 Jews including Sidko's mother and two of his siblings. At 76, he is one of the few living survivors of the atrocity that marked a turning point in the German plan to "solve the Jewish problem." After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads were sent out to follow the German armies. Babi Yar was one of the first mass killing sites. The Jews were forced to hand over valuables, strip and line up on the edge of the ravine. They were then shot with automatic fire. Babi Yar also served as a slaughterhouse for non-Jews, such as Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war.