On the southern outskirts of Odesa, near the 6th kilometer of the Ovidiopol highway, lies one of the most horrifying secrets of the 20th century – the NKVD secret facility known as «Tatarka». This site is a place of mass graves of victims of communist terror, as reported by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.
In the 1930s and 40s, punitive units of the NKVD operated here. People were brought here after nightly arrests, shot, and buried without any markers of identity.
«This is the Ukrainian Babi Yar of Odesa – a death site that Moscow tried to erase from memory», – experts state.
In 2007, the remains of over 1,000 bodies were discovered, victims of mass executions from 1937-1938.
During research in 2021, volunteers and historians found 29 burial sites with human remains. The total number of buried may range from several thousand to 8,000 people, according to archival studies.
«Among the dead are peasants, teachers, military personnel, priests, Poles, Bulgarians, Jews, Ukrainians… All those who resisted the Soviet power with their minds, faith, or simply their desire for freedom. The «Tatarka» is not an isolated case. Similar tragedies occurred in Babi Yar near Kyiv, in Vinnytsia, in Kharkiv. However, the Odesa burial site is one of the largest in southern Ukraine. Here, where once the caravan routes passed and the kobzars sang, lie the nameless martyrs of the Ukrainian people», – scholars write.
Archaeologists, historians, and forensic experts are calling for a large-scale DNA identification and the creation of a memorial. They emphasize that this is not just excavation – it is a return of names.
«Every bone found is evidence of a crime that Moscow has concealed for decades under the classification of «top secret». Odesa must remember. Odesa is a city that bore witness to the darkest pages of totalitarianism. Here, Ukrainians were killed for their language, faith, for refusing to be slaves of the empire. And today, as Russia again brings terror to Ukraine, we must loudly declare: «We know our executioners. And we know our martyrs». Memory is our weapon against forgetfulness.
We cannot bring back life, but we can restore dignity.
These places must become national memorials, sites of historical education and commemoration – not only for Ukraine but for the world», – historians assert.