At that time, there were about 60,000 Jews in the city. The Germans used the sabotage as a pretext to murder the remaining Jews of Kiev. During the first days of the German occupation, two major explosions, apparently set off by Soviet military engineers, destroyed the German headquarters and part of the city center. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 people were killed at Babi Yar during the German occupation.

Nazi killing of Jews, murdered over 33,000 Ukrainian Jews point blank and buried them in a mass grave - ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of massacres carried out by German forces and local Ukrainian collaborators during their campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II - first, and best documented, of the massacres took place on 29-30 September 1941, killing approximately 33,771 Jews - 'the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust' - Victims of other massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, communists, Ukrainian nationalists and Roma.