A public appeal for funds to build a headstone for the unmarked grave of Soviet émigré Anatoly Kuznetsov, author of a searing account of the Babyn Yar massacre, has smashed its target figure.

Donations poured in after the appeal was launched last month to raise £2,000 to memorialise the last resting place of the man who wrote about the mass slaughter of Jews by the Nazis on the outskirts of Kyiv in Ukraine after witnessing the massacre aged 12.

He recalled the horror in his landmark memoir, Babyn Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, as an adult.

His work was published in 1966, three years before Kuznetsov defected to the UK after finally losing faith in the Soviet Union following its invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

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Babyn Yar menorah (Getty Images)

But since his death in London 1979, his grave at Highgate Cemetery — just two plots away from the actor Sir Ralph Richardson and metres from the artist Patrick Caulfield — has remained unmarked.

Former JC political editor Martin Bright, now editor-at-large at Index on Censorship, launched a crowdfunded to raise money to build a headstone to stand at his grave.

Mr Bright set a £2,000 target, but that figure has been exceeded.

He said. “I am delighted that we have surpassed the target,” adding, “Kuznetsov chose to make Britain his home for the last 10 years of his life and it is fitting that we should pay tribute to the great writer.

"Kuznetsov was instrumental in bringing the specifically Jewish nature of the Babyn Yar massacre to world attention and for that alone he should have a permanent memorial at his grave.”

Mr Bright was first told of Kuznetsov’s book by a friend who had visited Kyiv on a trip with his synagogue.

He said: “I was astonished to discover that his grave is unmarked, but pleased that so many people were prepared to find a headstone to mark the resting place of this great writer.”