KIEV, Ukraine -- Pope John Paul II offered a prayer for Holocaust victims Monday under a statue of twisted and tormented figures at Babi Yar, the ravine where the Nazis unleashed the mass-scale, systematic slaughter of Europe's Jews during World War II.
The pope stood under a large concrete-and-bronze memorial at the bleak site, flanked by Ukraine's chief rabbi and other Jewish representatives. He prayed in silence and then recited a Latin prayer for the dead. Turning to the chief rabbi, Yaakov Dov Bleich, he said ''God bless you.''
The site has become a universal symbol of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, and Jewish leaders expressed gratitude to the pope for his visit.
''The pope's role in promoting tolerance on the threshold of the 20th and 21st centuries cannot be diminished,'' said Josef Zissels, chairman of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine.
Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and by September they had seized the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. That month, they ordered the city's Jews to gather, bringing their warm clothes and valuables -- as if they were being transported elsewhere -- then marched them in columns through the city to Babi Yar.
More than 33,000 Jews were killed in just two days. Altogether, up to 100,000 Jews and as many others were killed and dumped into the ravine over the nearly two-year German occupation.
The monument was constructed between 1966 and 1974, after decades of official Soviet silence about the Jewish losses at Babi Yar. In the Soviet Union, which lost some 27 million people in World War II, attempts to recognize Jewish suffering were suppressed -- and the plaque accompanying the monument paid tribute only to the massacred citizens of Kiev.
Jews got the chance to build their own monument at the site, a menorah, only in 1991.
Bleich said Monday that he would have preferred that the pope visit the Jewish memorial about a half mile away from the Soviet monument.
''But the fact that he's come means a lot to Jews worldwide,'' said Bleich, 36, a New York native.
Jewish leaders have criticized the Vatican's failure to condemn more strongly the Roman Catholic Church's passive role during the Holocaust. Pope Pius XII kept silent in the face of reports of Nazi atrocities, though some individual priests and nuns risked their lives to shelter Jews.
John Paul is the first pope to apologize for the church's historic shortcomings in relations with the Jews including its listless response to the Holocaust. The Vatican came under severe criticism again last month after it failed to respond to Syrian President Bashir Assad's anti-Semitic diatribe in the pope's presence.
Bleich said John Paul's visit to Babi Yar should ''unruffle some feathers that were ruffled in Syria.''
''Thanks to the great efforts of Pope John Paul II, there is hope that there will be no more Babi Yars,'' Bleich said in a statement.
Earlier Monday, the pope presided over a Divine Liturgy for Ukrainian Greek Catholics, who follow Orthodox Christian ritual but bear allegiance to the pope. The papal visit has given a boost to the 5 million-strong community, which has been locked in a bitter struggle with the majority, Moscow-linked Orthodox Church to regain property that was confiscated during the reign of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Sometimes the tensions have spilled over into physical confrontations.
Orthodox leaders accuse the Catholics of aggressive missionary activity among Slav believers, and have spurned the pope's overtures for a rapprochement.
Viktor Malukhin, spokesman for Russia's Orthodox Patriarchate in Moscow, said Monday that the church's refusal to meet with the pope was justified.
''Only one circumstance could have caused this position to change.... If the pope had condemned the violence toward Orthodox believers, if he had repented for the blood that has been spilled over the past 10 years in western Ukraine,'' Malukhin said.
At the Greek Orthodox service in Kiev, Orthodox believer Liudmyla Kanish sneered at Orthodox leaders' objections to John Paul's trip.
''The Moscow Patriarchate's reaction is linked to the fight for power and the pope's visit is linked to people's well-being,'' she said.
John Paul arrived late Monday in the western Catholic stronghold of Lviv, near Ukraine's border with his native Poland, where he is celebrating two Masses, blessing the construction site for a Catholic university, and beatifying 28 Greek Catholics. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Lviv, the first big crowds to turn out to greet the pontiff since his arrival in Ukraine on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Bleich, the chief rabbi, was being treated Monday night for a broken arm suffered in a car crash on the way to Kiev's airport after the Babi Yar ceremony, an aide said. No information was available about the circumstances of the collision.