Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Volodymyr ZelenskyyREUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday visited the site of the Babi Yar massacre to mark the 82nd anniversary of one of the largest mass murders of Jews in the Holocaust, AFP reported.

Zelenskyy placed a candle at the historic site and said Ukraine would "never" forget the tragedy perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

"No matter how many years have passed, humanity will remember the lives taken by Nazism," Zelensky wrote on social media. "And it will always remember that this evil was punished."

On September 29-30, 1941, around 34,000 adults and children, most of them Jews, were killed at the Babi Yar ravine outside Nazi-occupied Kyiv.

Babi Yar, also called Babyn Yar, was the scene of mass executions until 1943. Up to 100,000 people were killed there, including Jews, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war.

The 82nd anniversary of the massacre comes as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues.

In March of last year, shortly after the start of the Russian invasion, Ukraine said that the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center was damaged in a Russian air strike. Russia’s Ambassador to Israel rejected those reports as fake news.

(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Sukkot in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)