Twice as many people killed in Babyn Yar massacre than named at Nuremberg Trials - Zelensky

KYIV. Oct 7 (Interfax) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that, according to the latest studies, around 200,000 people could have been killed in the massacre of Jews by Nazi soldiers in Babyn Yar during World War II.

"How many were left to lie here forever? Nobody can tell exactly today. The Nuremberg trials mentioned the figure of about 100,000 people. Today, new research says there were probably about 200,000 people," Zelensky was quoted by his press service as saying.

"For the Nazis, these thousands did not matter, unlike all of us. Because every new thousand of victims is a new thousand of years of our pain," he said.

Nazi forces captured Kyiv in September 1941 and a week later they shot 752 patients of the Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital, he said.

In the first two days of the Babyn Yar massacre, the Nazis executed 33,771 Jews, mostly the elderly, women and children over the age of three. Infants were killed without even counting, Zelensky said. In the next two years, the Nazis executed almost the entire Jewish population of Kyiv in Babyn Yar, and then killed Ukrainian Roma, prisoners of war and lawbreakers, he said.

As reported, the Ukrainian president and other guests took part in the opening of the Crystal Wall of Wailing memorial and watched a light performance in the ravine. The participants of the event also visited the symbolic A Place for Reflection synagogue, where the cantor's prayer was performed.