German president visits sites of Nazi atrocities in Ukraine

During an official visit to Ukraine, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called for greater efforts to commemorate the victims of Nazi crimes on the territory of the former Soviet Union during World War II, reported dpa.

"The sites of National Socialist crimes in Ukraine are barely marked on the map of our memories," he said on Wednesday while visiting two memorial sites.

Yet, he said, remembrance is important not only of the events, but also in naming the dead: "And that is why we need to illuminate the blind spots in our memory. We must make common cause with Ukrainians in sharpening our memory."

Steinmeier's first visit on Wednesday was to the site of the village of Koryukivka, where on March 1 1943 some 6,700 men, women and children were murdered over two days in mass punishment for a partisan attack on the local German garrison. The village was completely destroyed in one of the worst single atrocities of World War II.

In the evening Steinmeier is due to give a speech on the 80th anniversary of the Jewish massacre in Babi Yar.

On September 29 and 30 1941, German troops from the Wehrmacht, police and SS, shot 33,771 Jewish residents of occupied Kiev. By the time of liberation by the Red Army in November 1943, around 100,000 people had been murdered in Babi Yar, including prisoners of war, partisans, Roma and the mentally ill, making Babi Yar the largest mass grave in Europe.