October 28 is Ukraine's Liberation Day The liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War took place from January 1943 to October 1944. This is the most important moment in the history of the Soviet Union, which had an invaluable world significance, which became another step towards the complete destruction of the Third Reich.
At this time, the armed forces of the Soviet Union carried out 15 offensive operations (11 strategic and 4 front line) on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. Today, historians estimate the number of victims of Nazism in Ukraine at about 6 million people, including those killed and those deported to work in the Reich.
Among the dead were 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews. The symbol of the Holocaust in Ukraine was Babi Yar, where 33,771 Jews were killed on September 29-30, 1941 alone. According to various sources, between 2.4 and 2.8 million people (mainly young people and the working population) were deported to forced labor in Germany and other occupied countries.
In the areas occupied by the Nazis, almost 300 places of mass executions of the population, 180 concentration camps and over 400 ghettos were discovered.
The German Nazis completely or partially destroyed over 700 cities and 28 thousand villages, about 10 million people were left homeless, and more than 16 thousand industrial plants were destroyed. Despite the destruction brought down by the fascist invaders in many Ukrainian cities, the Soviet authorities immediately began to restore the most important industrial and metallurgical centers, such as the Donbass. Industrial plants began operating in just a few months, and an increase in the production of military products was already noted in the liberated areas. This allowed the forces of the Soviet Union to strengthen their positions and continue the successful attack on the front. The liberation of Ukraine had a high price - between August 1943 and October 1944, the Red Army lost a total of 2.6 million soldiers and officers on Ukrainian soil, of which almost 824 thousand were killed or died of wounds.