Kurenivka mudslide

Kurenivka mudslide
	Remediation works after the event
Date	13 March 1961;63 years ago
Time	09:20 (UTC+02:00)
Location	Babi Yar, Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union Babi Yar
Coordinates	50°26′40″N30°32′44″E / 50.44444°N 30.54556°E
Type	Mudflow
Cause	Dam design flaws and poor maintenance
Deaths	145 (Soviet official sources), up to 1,500 (unofficial later investigations)

Last updated January 28, 2025

The Kurenivka mudslide occurred on 13 March 1961 in Kyiv, then a city in the Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. It took place near the historic Babi Yar ravine, which had been the site of the mass murder of more than 100,000 Jews and other civilians during World War II. The mudslide began at the edge of the ravine and dumped mud, water, and human remains into the streets of Kyiv. The Soviet authorities suppressed information about the disaster, and claimed 145 people were killed, while forbidding any memorial events for the victims. A 2012 study in Ukraine estimated that the number of victims was closer to 1,500.^[1]

Disaster

The mudslide started when a dam securing the loam pulp dump of a brick factory near the Babi Yar ravine collapsed after rain, releasing large volumes of pulp sludge, mud, water, and human remains down the steep hill of the modern Olena Teliha Street and into the streets of Kyiv. The slide immediately hit the lower-lying Kurenivka neighbourhood, reaching a residential area, a tram depot, several industrial buildings and a cemetery, as well as traffic moving along the streets. The total volume of pulp in the vicinity of Kyrylivska-Novokostiantynivska streets was up to 600,000 cubic metres (21,000,000 cu ft) with a depth of up to 4 metres (13 ft). While the contemporaneous official report indicated only 145 fatalities, a more recent study estimated that about 1,500 people died in the tragedy.^[1]^[2]

Recovery operations

Recovery operations continued for days, but no official notification of the disaster was published by the Soviet authorities.

Recovery operations were led by the 120 Detached Engineering Battalion and the Anti-gas Regiment of the Local Anti-Aircraft Defence troops of the Soviet Army in the Kyiv Military District, led by Ivan Kharchenko, a Hero of the Soviet Union. The events were censored by the Soviet Government. To cover up the scale of the disaster, people who died were buried in different cemeteries in the city and nearby towns, with different dates and reasons for their deaths written in government records. Any acts of public remembrance were prohibited, and Soviet troops were sent to Kyiv to clean up signs of the catastrophe.^[3]^{[ better source needed ]}

Aftermath

Construction engineers and managers responsible for the dam's design and maintenance were accused of negligence by the authorities, and subsequently convicted.^{[ citation needed ]}

In 1962 Ukrainian Communist Party leaders ordered the leveling of the Babi Yar ravine and the establishment of a park on the site where at least 33,000 Jews from Kyiv and the surrounding area had been murdered in 1941 by the Einsatzgruppen .^[4]

Related Research Articles

Babi Yar or Babyn Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first and best documented of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, in which some 33,771 Jews were murdered. Other victims of massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, communists and Romani people. It is estimated that a total of between 100,000 and 150,000 people were murdered at Babi Yar during the German occupation.

The Kyiv TV Tower is a 385 m-high (1,263 ft) lattice metal tower on Oranzhereina Street, Kyiv, Ukraine, and is the tallest structure in the country. The tower was built in 1973 while Kyiv was the capital of Ukrainian SSR. The tower was the tallest freestanding metal structure in the world. It is used for radio and television broadcasting and is not open to the public. It is the tallest lattice tower in the world and sixth tallest structure in Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Blobel</span> German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator, convicted war criminal (1894–1951)

Paul Blobel was a German Sicherheitsdienst (SD) commander and convicted war criminal who played a leading role in the Holocaust. He organised the Babi Yar massacre, the largest massacre of the Second World War at Babi Yar ravine in September 1941, pioneered the use of the gas van, and, following re-assignment, developed the gas chambers for the extermination camps. From late 1942 onwards, he led Sonderaktion 1005, wherein millions of bodies were exhumed at sites across Eastern Europe in an effort to erase all evidence of the Holocaust and specifically of Operation Reinhard. After the war, Blobel was tried at the Einsatzgruppen trial and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1951.

Olena Ivanivna Teliha was a Ukrainian poet and activist of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) of Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnicity.

Obolonskyi District is an urban district of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Obolonskyi District encompasses territories far beyond of its historical neighborhood sharing the same name. It was formed on 3 March 1975 and initially called as Minskyi District. In 2001 it was renamed after its historical neighborhood. Its current population is 290,000 inhabitants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anatoly Kuznetsov</span> Soviet writer (1929–1979)

Anatoly Vasilievich Kuznetsov was a Russian-language Soviet writer who described his experiences in German-occupied Kiev during World War II in his internationally acclaimed novel Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel. The book was originally published in a censored form in 1966 in the Russian language.

Drobytsky Yar is a ravine in Kharkiv, Ukraine and the site of Nazi massacres during the Holocaust in Ukraine. Starting in October 1941, Nazi troops occupied Kharkiv and began preparations for the mass-murder of the local population. Over the following months, members of the Einsatzgruppen murdered an estimated 16,000–30,000 local residents, mainly Jews. Notably on 15 December 1941, when the temperature was −15 °C (5 °F), around 15,000 Jews were shot. Children were thrown into pits alive, to save bullets, in the expectation that they would quickly freeze to death. The site's menorah monument was allegedly damaged by Russia on March 26, 2022 in an artillery exchange during the invasion of Ukraine.

Ilya Andreyevich Khrzhanovsky is a Russian-born film director, screenwriter, film producer and member of the European Film Academy. His father Andrei Khrzhanovsky is one of the top Russian animation directors, and his mother Mariya Neyman, a philologist and script editor. He is the grandson of artist and actor Yury Khrzhanovsky (1905—1987).

<i>Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel</i> 1966 novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov

Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel is a documentary novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov, about the Nazi occupation of Kyiv and the massacres at Babi Yar. The two-day murder of 33,771 Jewish civilians on 29–30 September 1941, in the Kyiv ravine was one of the largest single mass killings of the Holocaust.

Kabayda Anatoly (Кабайда Анатолій a.k.a. Anatolij Zukiwskyj a.k.a. - Medvid was a Ukrainian community and political activist.

The 1811 Great fire of Podil occurred on the morning of 9 July 1811 in the historical and commercial neighborhood of Podil in Kiev (Kyiv), the capital of Ukraine. The fire lasted for three days and almost destroyed the whole neighborhood. Before the fire, Podil was the city's most densely populated neighborhood; out of 3,672 households in the city, 2,068 were located in the Podil.

The Kiev-West or Syrets was a Nazi concentration camp or established in 1942 in Kyiv's western neighborhood of Syrets, part of Kyiv since 1799. The toponym was derived from a local small river. Some 327 inmates of the KZ Syrets were forced to remove all traces of mass murder at Babi Yar.

The Holocaust saw the systematic mass murder of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, the Crimean General Government and some areas which were located to the east of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, in the Transnistria Governorate and Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region and Carpathian Ruthenia during World War II. The listed areas are currently parts of Ukraine.

Babi Yar, a ravine near Kyiv, was the scene of possibly the largest shooting massacre during the Holocaust. After the war, commemoration efforts encountered serious difficulty because of the policy of the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a number of memorials were erected. The creation of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center was initiated in 2016.

Taras Shevchenko State Art School is a selective gymnasium school specializing in fine arts, in Kyiv, Ukraine. The school is part of the complex that also includes schools of ballet and music. It is located adjoining a historic park overlooking the southern end of Babi Yar. The school accepts students from 5th grade through to and including 12th grade.

Poems about Babi Yar commemorate the massacres committed by the Nazi Einsatzgruppe during World War II at Babi Yar, in a ravine located within the present-day Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. In just one of these atrocities – taking place over September 29–30, 1941 – 33,771 Jewish men, women and children were killed in a single Einsatzgruppe operation.

The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Kyiv, Ukraine.

Tetyana Yosypivna Markus was a member of the anti-Nazi underground in Kiev.

Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, officially the Foundation and Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, is an educational institution that documents, explains and commemorates the Babyn Yar shootings of September 1941 and aims to broaden and sustain the memory of The Holocaust in Eastern Europe, taking into account geopolitical changes during the 20th century. On September 29, 2016, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, together with public figures and philanthropists, initiated the creation of the first Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. The Memorial Center is planned to be opened in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2025/26.

Babi Yar. Context, also known as Babyn Yar. Context, is a 2021 documentary film by the Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa that explores the prelude and aftermath of the World War II massacre of nearly 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar in Kyiv, Ukraine in September 1941.

References

1 2 Harran 2000, pp. 655–698.
↑ Smoliy, Goryak & Danilenko 2012, p. 18.
↑ "The Kurenivka tragedy". www.visitkyiv.travel. Archived from the original on 2019-08-21. Retrieved 2019-08-21.
↑ "Memorial Complex Babi Yar". Information Portal to European Sites of Remembrance. Berlin, Germany: Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas. Retrieved 28 February 2020.

Sources

Harran, Marilyn, ed. (2000). "Epilogue: The Aftermath". The Holocaust Chronicle (1st ed.). Publications International. pp. 655–698. ISBN 978-0785329633.
Smoliy, V. A.; Goryak, G. V.; Danilenko, V. M. (2012). Куренівська трагедія 13 березня 1961 р. у Києві: причини, обставини, наслідки. Документи і матеріали[Kurenivka Tragedy March 13, 1961 in Kiev: Causes, Circumstances, Consequences. Documents and materials] (in Ukrainian). Institute of Ukrainian History NAN Ukraine. p. 18. ISBN 978-966-02-6392-5.

External links

Куреневская Трагедия - Киевский "день Помпеи" (Kurenevskaya Tragedy - Kyiv's "Pompeii Day") Information and images relating to the disaster (In Russian).
(Запікана куренівська трагедія (Baked Kureniv tragedy) Eye witness accounts, information and images relating to the disaster from The Ukrainian Week (in Ukrainian)
«Мы к вам пришли. Не мы — овраги» (“We have come to you. We are not the ravines") In-depth article by the Ukrainian weekly newspaper [[]] [ ru; uk ], which includes transcripts of 1960s reports by the Soviet authorities

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[FOOTNOTEHarran2000655–698-1] 1 2 Harran 2000, pp. 655–698.

[FOOTNOTESmoliyGoryakDanilenko201218-2] Smoliy, Goryak & Danilenko 2012, p. 18.

[3] "The Kurenivka tragedy". www.visitkyiv.travel. Archived from the original on 2019-08-21. Retrieved 2019-08-21.

[BY-4] "Memorial Complex Babi Yar". Information Portal to European Sites of Remembrance. Berlin, Germany: Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas. Retrieved 28 February 2020.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

Kurenivka mudslide

Contents