It took two years for the Forward to first cover the 1941 massacre at Babyn Yar, a ravine in Ukraine, where the Nazis massacred more than 33,000 Jews over two days. Years after Forward’s initial report, their kept readers connected to Babyn Yar, with witness accounts at a Nazi war crimes trial, a detailed history of the event Kyiv Jews shared with a delegation of New York rabbis visiting in the 1950s, and dispatches from their Paris correspondent.

With eyewitnesses to the atrocities largely gone, the Forverts back issues are an invaluable source bearing witness to what we cannot even imagine. This walk through the highlights of that coverage, its content and its tone, may offer today’s readers a deeper understanding of events unfolding there in our time.