DoubleBand’s Ukraine: Holocaust Ground Zero on Channel 4
Date Posted: September 1, 2023
Ukraine: Holocaust Ground Zero looks at the devastating impact of the Holocaust in Ukraine, the site of some of the most horrific massacres by the Nazis during WW2. Produced by DoubleBand Films with support from Northern Ireland Screen, the documentary airs on Monday 4th September at 10pm on Channel 4.
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 resulted in some of the most horrific massacres and acts of genocide perpetrated during the Second World War – not least in Ukraine.
At one site alone – Babyn Yar, on the outskirts of Kyiv – almost 34,000 Jews were shot by the Nazis over one weekend in September 1941. One month earlier 23,600 Jews were massacred at the Ukrainian town of Kamianets-Podilskyi.
These atrocities in Ukraine were among the Nazis’ first acts of mass murder, in pursuit of the Final Solution. Acts that led to little-known war crimes trials in the Soviet Union, including the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv, all captured on extraordinary Soviet archive film.
With contributions from survivors of the Holocaust, along with leading historians including Wendy Lower, Omer Bartov, Dieter Pöhl and Alex J Kay, this is the story of Ukraine during the Second World War. Of the beginning of the Holocaust – on one of Europe’s bloodiest battlegrounds.
