December 15, 1941
At Drobytsky Yar, a ravine in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nazi troops invading the Soviet Union began killing local residents. Over the following year, some 16,000 people, mainly Jews, were killed. Notably on December 15, when the temperature was −15 degrees Celsius (+5 °F), 15,000 Jews were shot. Children were thrown into pits alive, to save bullets, in expectation that they would quickly freeze to death.
