JF Ptak Science Books Post 2620
This rare report asserts and outlines all manner of Nazi war crimes committed against the Soviet Union to April 1943 and issues an official call to keep track of every horror in the form of the Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate Nazi Atrocities via a decree of the Supreme Soviet. At this point the German attack against the U.S.S.R. was nearly two years old and involved the majority of the German army; in April 1943 nearly 4 million German soldiers were waging war against about 10,000,000 Soviets in the largest military campaign in history, ultimately costing the lives of 10 million Soviets and 5 million Germans, with millions more on each side being MIA and captured--staggering numbers.In the midst of all of this the Germans flayed the Soviet Army, people, and land, and the Russians were very highly decided that now that the turning of the offensive was in sight (now just a few months after the great victory at Stalingrad),that they would absolutely not forget anything that the Germans did there. This fragile pamphlet was one announcement of this intention.
I've attached the full pamphlet, below, a text-only reproduction from the Internet Archive--I would reproduce my copy with the full flavor of the original except that it might not survive being opened and folded flat over the scanner.
Some of the prominent statements in the pamphlet include the murder of the civilian population as well as their enslavement. Lastly, at the end of this grim spectacle, there is a section naming the German officers responsible for the mass of killing and torture.
- "the murder of peaceful citizens and the violation of defenceless citizens, women, children and old folk by the
invaders, and also of facts relating to the exportation of Soviet people into German slavery" - "destroying monuments of art and culture of the plundering valuable artistic and historical documents,
demolishing buildings and stealing the valuable property of various religious bodies." - "losses inflicted by the marauding and plundering activities of the German Fascist invaders on collective farms, co-operatives, trade union and other social organisations by the plunder and destruction of buildings, devices and equipment designed for production and cultural purposes, by the plunder or destruction of stores of raw and other materials, products and goods, agricultural crops, forests, fruit, vegetables, etc., and other collective farm and co-operative property"
- "...torturing and murdering peaceful citizens. They are plundering wholesale the population of towns and villages and exporting the personal property of Soviet citizens, accumulated by their honest labour, to Germany, together with collective and State farm property."
And this incredible statement of truth:
- "the German-Fascist Army mercilessly destroys Soviet towns and villages, engages in violence, torture and the tormenting and murder of non-combatant citizens as well as of Soviet war prisoners. History has never before witnessed such mass extermination of human beings as that perpetrated by the German-Fascist invaders. " There is a full section on the "Murder and Torture of Soviet Civilians".
There's much more if you give the work a full reading.
[Source: Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/investigationofn00unse/investigationofn00unse_djvu.txt]
Investigation of Nazi Atrocities
DECREE OF THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE U.S.S.R.
HAVING treacherously attacked the Soviet Union, the
German Fascist invaders and their accomplices are
perpetrating monstrous crimes in Soviet territories
temporarily occupied by them, torturing and murdering peaceful
citizens. They are plundering wholesale the population of
towns and villages and exporting the personal property of
Soviet citizens, accumulated by their honest labour, to Germany,
together with collective and State farm property.
For all crimes perpetrated by the German Fascist invaders
and their accomplices, and for all material losses inflicted by
them on Soviet citizens, collective farms, co-operatives and
other social organisations, State enterprises and institutions
of the Soviet Union, the criminal Hitlerite Government, the
German Army Command and their accomplices bear full
responsibility — both for the crimes and for the material losses.
In order to keep complete records of the vile crimes
perpetrated by the Germans and their accomplices and the
losses inflicted by them on citizens, collective farms, social
organisations, State enterprises and institutions of the U.S.S.R. ;
in order to combine and co-ordinate the work already carried
out by the Soviet State organisations with regard to keeping
records of these crimes and the losses perpetrated by the
invaders ;
in order to establish the losses inflicted by the German
invaders and their accomplices on citizens of the Soviet Union
and to determine the amount of possible compensation for
personal losses sustained ;
in order to establish, on the basis of documents, the extent
of the losses sustained by the Soviet State and collective farms
and social organisations, subject to compensation in accordance
with the just demands of the Soviet people ;
in order to establish wherever possible the identity of the
German Fascist criminals guilty of the organisation or execution
of the crimes in occupied Soviet territories, so that they may
be handed over to court for severe punishment : —
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
decrees :
1. To form an Extraordinary State Commission to investigate
the crimes perpetrated by the German Fascist invaders and
their accomplices and the losses inflicted by them on citizens
-collective farms, social organisations, State enterprises and
institutions of the U.S.S.R.
2. To entrust the Extraordinary State Commission with the
investigation of the crimes perpetrated by the German Fascist
invaders, the collection of all documents, the checking up on
them and the preparation of all material relating to the crimes
of the Hitlerite criminals and the material losses inflicted on
Soviet citizens, collective farms and the State as a result of the
occupation of Soviet territories by the armies of Hitlerite
Germany and their accomplices.
For this purpose the Commission has to keep as complete
records as possible
(a) of facts relating to the murder of peaceful citizens and
the violation of defenceless citizens, women, children and old
folk by the invaders, and also of facts relating to the exportation
of Soviet people into German slavery ;
(b) of losses inflicted by the Hitlerite invaders on Soviet
citizens by the destruction of dwelling houses and other
buildings, by the plundering and destruction of economic
equipment, food stores, cattle and poultry and house property,
and also by enforced contributions, fines, taxes and other
forms of collections imposed on the people ;
(c) of the losses inflicted by the marauding and plundering
activities of the German Fascist invaders on collective farms,
co-operatives, trade union and other social organisations by the
plunder and destruction of buildings, devices and equipment
designed for production and cultural purposes, by the plunder
or destruction of stores of raw and other materials, products
and goods, agricultural crops, forests, fruit, vegetables, etc.,
and other collective farm and co-operative property ;
(d) of the losses inflicted by the invaders on State enterprises
and institutions of the Soviet Union by the destruction and
plunder of factories, works, electric power stations, mines, oil
works, various industrial constructions and equipment, railway
lines and highways, bridges, canals and hydro-technical
constructions, stations and ports, sea-going and river-going
ships, motor-car and other transport, means of communication
and also of forests, fields, crops, perennial plantations and other
national property ;
(e) of the losses inflicted by the Hitlerite invaders by the
plunder and destruction of artistic, cultural and historically
valuable property of the peoples of the U.S.S.R., by the destruc-
tion of museums, scientific institutions, hospitals, schools,
higher schools, libraries, theatres and other cultural institutions,
and also buildings, equipment and property of various religious
bodies ;
(f) of the losses inflicted on the population and on the Soviet
State through the evacuation of citizens, industrial enterprises,
collective farm property and other social organisations into the
depth of the U.S.S.R.
3. The Extraordinary State Commission will have the right
to entrust the appropriate organisations with the investigation
and interrogation of those who have suffered and with the
collection of testimonies and other documents referring to the
violations, brutalities, plunder, destruction and other criminal
deeds perpetrated by the Hitlerite invaders and their accom-
plices, and to order the local State organisations to collaborate
with the Commission by all possible means.
4. To confirm the following personnel of the Extraordinary
State Commission for investigation of the crimes of the German
Fascist invaders and their accomplices and the losses inflicted
by them on citizens, collective farms, social organisations, State
enterprises and institutions of the U.S.S.R. :
N. M. Shvernik (Chairman), Academician
N. N. Burdenko, Academician B. E. Vedeneyev,
V. S. Grizodubova, A. A. Zhdanov, Nikolai —
Metropolitan of Kiev and Galitsk, Academician
T. D. Lysenko, Academician E. V. Tarle.
A. N. Tolstoy, Academician I. P. Trainin.
5. The Council of People’s Commissars of the U.S.S.R. to
confirm the status of the Extraordinary State Commission for
investigation of the crimes perpetrated by the German Fascist
invaders.
Signed :
M. KALININ, Chairman of the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
A. GORKIN, Secretary of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
Moscow, Kremlin, November 2, 1942.
STATEMENT BY THE EXTRA-
ORDINARY STATE COMMISSION
for the Ascertainment and Investigation of
Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders
and their Associates, on Outrages against
Citizens and Damage to Collective Farms,
Public Organisations, State Enterprises
and Institutions of the U.S.S.R. in the
towns of Vyazma , Gzhatsk and Sychevka,
Smolensk Region, and in the town of
Rzhev, Kalinin region. (April 6, 1943.)
RETREATING under the Red Army’s blows, the
German-Fascist Army mercilessly destroys Soviet
towns and villages, engages in violence, torture and
the tormenting and murder of non-combatant citizens as well
as of Soviet war prisoners. History has never before witnessed
such mass extermination of human beings as that perpetrated
by the German-Fascist invaders.
Sentiments of pity and mercy are unknown to them. With
monstrous cruelty they outrage helpless old men ; neither
mothers’ tears nor children’s outstretched hands imploring for
help stop them. The German Army, bred by Hitler, torments
and murders all those whom the Germans do not need, while
those who are able to work for them are carried off like cattle
to the slave markets of Germany.
The Chairman of the Extraordinary State Committee,
Shvernik, and member of the committee Nikolai, Metropolitan
of Kiev and Galitsk personally ascertained in Vyazma, Gzhatsk,
Sychevka and Rzhev and adjoining districts the monstrous
villainies of the German invaders, the tormenting, torture,
murder and abduction of Soviet citizens to German slavery,
the demolition of towns and villages.
The crimes of the German-Fascists and their associates have
been confirmed by the evidence of the Soviet citizens who
resided in these districts during the occupation, as well as by
protocols drawn up by committees composed of representatives
of Soviet economic, co-operative, trade union and other public
bodies and of workers, employees, collective farmers, urban
and rural intellectuals and Red Army men.
MURDER AND TORTURE OF SOVIET CITIZENS
Having set themselves the aim of destroying the Soviet
State and depriving Soviet people of their shelter and their
national culture and transforming them into German slaves, the
German Military Command ordered its troops to deal merci-
lessly ' not only with war prisoners, but also with the non-
combatant populations of Soviet villages and towns.
In the Vyazma, Gfchatsk, Rzhev and Sychevka districts, in
disregard of all laws of civilisation and human morality. Colonel-
General Heinritz, Commander of the Fourth German Army,
and Colonel-General Model, Commander of the Ninth German
Army, outraged, tortured and murdered non-combatant and
perfectly innocent Soviet citizens.
On their orders, officers and soldiers of the German Army
tortured, -gouged out the eyes, severed the arms, legs and ears,
and murdered women, children and old people. Units of
General Schiemann’s Gendarmerie Corps, Burgomaster Arnold
Stampf and Chief of Gestapo Baron Adler tortured to death and
murdered thousands of non-combatants in the town of Vyazma.
On December io, 1942, they drove 34 men and women
Soviet citizens out of the town in lorries, forced them to dig
their own graves and then shot them. On February 25, 1942,
the Fascists shot 65-year old Surgeon Birstein of the Vyazma
•Municipal Hospital, 62-year old Doctor Loyprev, an oculist,
and his 16-year-old son; Murashevsky, 74 years old, was
subjected to fearful torture. He was carrying a pail of water
from the well to his home. German soldiers quartered in the
neighbourhood called him into a house and there brutally
murdered him. Examination of Murashevsky ’s body revealed
that his right cheek had been slashed and turned inside out up
to his ear, which was torn off. Ilis left eye hail been gouged
out and a triangle cut in the eyelid. The upper lip had been
cut off and a triangle cut out on the temple. The skin on the
back of his head had been cut off by a razor.
The German-Fascist scoundrels forced women doctors to
work in the hospitals as stretcher-bearers. N.C.O. Richter,
commandant of the infectious diseases department of the
hospital, beat the stretcher-bearers and nurses into unconscious-
ness for the slightest fault. Russian doctors and nurses were
not permitted to use lavatories, on the doors of which hung
signs : “ Entrance forbidden to Russians. Penalty — shooting.”
In Sychevka, the commandant of the town, Senior-Lieutenant
Kissler, dealt ruthlessly with women, children and old people.
On January 7, 1943, he herded about 100 Jewish women,
old folk and children together, first beat them up and then took
them to the outskirts of the town and shot them.
On February 28, 1943, the German-Fascist fiends herded
Sychevka people who were sick with typhus into house No. 57,
on Naberezhnaya Street, allegedly in order to render them
medical aid, locked them in and set fire to the house. Some of
the sick persons were rescued from the fire by the efforts of
Nurse Popova and other medical personnel.
Near the village of Kholmets, Sychevka district, it was
necessary to remove mines from a section -of the road. On
the order of Major-General Fiesler, commander of the 102nd
German Infantry Division, the Fascists herded together the
residents of the village and drove them along the mined road.
All these people were killed by exploding mines.
The Fascist authorities suspected residents of the village of
Korbutovka of connections with guerillas and burned the
village to the ground. They ripped open the stomach of the
woman collective farmer Baranova, who protested against this
destruction, slashed her face with a knife, wrenched the arms
of her children out of their sockets and smashed in their skulls.
In the village of Zaichiki, Gestapo agents drove into a house
6'1-year-old Mikhail Zaikov, 69-year-old Nikifor Belyarkov,
70-year-old Ekatarina Begorova, 70-year-old Ekatarina
Golubeva, five-year-old Egor Dadonov, seven-year-old Mira
Zernova and others, totalling 23 persons, set fire to the house
and burnt alive all those inside.
In the village of Kliny the Germans flung the child of
collective farmer Bogdanova into a bonfire and then burnt the
mother also. In the village of Vassily evka they hanged Tarbin,
a collective farm chairman, and Yermolinsky, a storekeeper, on
iron hooks by their jaws. Their bodies remained hanging in
the street for a long time.
During the Germans’ retreat from the village of Drachevo,
Gzhatsk district, in March, 1943, Lieut. Boss, assistant chief
of German Field Police, herded 200 residents of the villages of
Drachevo, Zlobino, Astakhovo and Mishino into the house of
collective farmer Chistyakova, locked the door and set fire to
the house. All the 200 persons were burnt to death.
Among them were old people, women and children : 63 -year-
old Platonov, 59-year-old Platonova, 35-year-old Vassili
Platonov and his children 5-year-old Vyacheslav, 3-year-old
Alexander, 42-year-old Vassilieva and her daughters 11-year-
old Maria, 9-year-old Anna, and 5-year-old son Arkady,
Vassilieva’s 72-year-old mother, 64-year-old Chistyakova and
her 13-year-old son Ivan, and 4-year-old grandson Dmitri,
63-year-old Smirnov and his 58-year-old wife, their 27-year-old
daughter with her two children, aged 3 and i\ years, their 15-
year-old daughter, and others.
In the village of Stepaniki, Gzhatsk district, the Germans
put 25-year-old Elena Ilyina into a bath-house, tortured her for
seven days, flogged and clubbed her and poured cold water over
her. On January 8, 1943, they forced all the villagers of
Stepaniki to be present at the execution and hanged her on
a tree.
In the villages of Kulikovo and Kolesniki, Gzhatsk district,
the Fascists burnt all the villagers, young and old, in a house.
In the central square of the town of Rzhev, where Lenin’s
monument used to stand, on the orders of the commander of
the 27th German Army Corps, Major-General Weiss, the
commandant of the town, Major Kurtfeld, set up a gallows on
which dozens of non-combatant citizens were hanged, including
Alexander Drozdov, Anna Pomarskaya and Fedoseyev. Several
thousand persons were shot. On March 20, 1943, the bodies of
three women and three infants murdered by the Fascists were
discovered at 47, Vorovsky Street belonging to Palov, The
house had been ransacked. In the next house the bodies of the
Sedov family were discovered ; the father and mother had been
shot, their 12-year-old daughter, Raya, had been bayoneted,
their 15-year-old son, Valentin, had been shot in the right eye,
their 18-year-old daughter, Zena, had been raped and strangled
and their 5-months-old daughter, Katya, shot in the temple.
In a ditch in a vegetable garden in one of the courtyards of
block No. 116 eight bodies of Soviet citizens mutilated beyond
recognition were discovered, including 30-year-old Soloyeva,
whose lips had been ' cut off, 28-year-old Andreyeva, whose
body was covered with bayonet wounds
CRIMES AGAINST SOVIET WAR PRISONERS
Aiming at the mass extermination of Soviet war prisoners,
the German military authorities doom Red Army men to death
from hunger, typhus and dysentry. War prisoners are not given
any medical aid. In Vyazma there was a hospital for war
prisoners in an unheated stone barn. The patients were given
no treatment or care. Between 20 and 30 men died daily.
The patients were given half a bowl of soup without bread per
day. According to Doctor Mikheyev, on one particular day,
247 men died in that “ hospital ” from exhaustion and disease.
The German soldiers also used Red Army men war prisoners
as targets and shot at them as they crossed the hospital court-
yard.
Surgeon Grazhdershin and other Soviet doctors were
imprisoned for the night in a war prisoners’ camp. These
doctors state that throughout the night shrieks could be heard
from various camp buildings : “ Save me ! ” “ Help ! ”
“ Why are you beating us ? ” “ Oh ! I am dying.” During the
day, when food was being distributed, the war prisoners
crowded around the kitchen. To “ restore order ” the German
guard took a grenade off his belt and flung it into the crowd.
Several men were killed and many were wounded.
In February, 1943, before the retreat from Vyazma, the
Fascists brought a group of arrested Soviet citizens and Red
Army men prisoners to the Novotorzhskaya station, near
Vyazma. While being driven from the station to the camp
43 men collapsed, exhausted by hunger. The German guards
shot them. Sr. N.C.O. Rautenberg, commandant of Camp
No. 2, subjected Soviet war prisoners to inhuman torture and
executions.
After the liberation of Sychevka over 3,000 bodies of Red
Army men and non-combatant citizens were discovered in an
enormous ditch in the camp. Examination of the bodies
proved that brutal torture had been inflicted : many bodies
had their arms and legs broken, skulls smashed in, noses and
ears cut off, eyes gouged out and genitals severed.
In January, 1943, in the village of Kharino, the Fascists
drove 79 Red Army men. prisoners into stable yards and burnt
them alive.
In November, 1941, in the village of Korytovka, German
soldiers practised shooting at Red Army men and killed 14 of
them. In June, 1942, on the order of the Chief of Gendarmerie,
Captain Schultz, five Red Army men were taken out of the
Vyazma war prisoners’ camp. The guards ordered them to
run and opened fire on them. Three were killed at once,
while two who had been wounded were finished off with rifle
butts.
In Komsomolskaya Street, Vyazma, a Red Army man left
a group of other prisoners to take a drink of water from a
stream. The German guard beat him up with his rifle butt.
Then he took him aside and shot him. Near Vyazma station
a Red Army man prisoner entered a workers’ mess and asked
for a plateful of soup. The guard followed him and ordered
him to leave the mess at once. The prisoner asked permission
to finish the soup. The guard dragged him from the mess
into the street and shot him in front of the door.
In December, 1942, the German guard shot two Red Army
men prisoners in Sofia Perovskaya Street ; their bodies lay on
the pavement for several days.
ABDUCTION OF SOVIET CITIZENS TO GERMAN
SLAVERY
According to far from complete data, during the occupation
the Fascists drove to penal labour in Germany about 5,000
persons from Vyazma, 1,500 from Sychevka and about 10,000
from Gzhatsk and Rzhev.
On March 2, 1943, two daughters of a Vyazma resident
named Vinogradov — 20-year-old Vera and 16-year-old
Nadezhda — were driven away to Germany. In response to
Vinogradov’s request to spare his daughters and not take them
away, the Fascists set fire to his house.
The Germans selected 31 persons from the villages of
Kulikovo and Ivanovskaya and drove them to Germany, lhe
remaining villagers were killed and the village burnt down.
The German authorities drove to Germany 43 persons from
the villages of Andreyevskoye and Dyatlovo : 40-year-old
Vassili Nikonov, 15-year-oid Raisa Malinina, 40-year-old
Maria Rodionova, 1 8-year-old Vassili Chistov, 33-year-old
Nikolai Voronov, 48-year-old Tatyana Khaldeyeva, 41 -year-old
Nikolai Safonov, 45 -year-old Maria Kolossova, 1 6-year-old
Anna Fetisova, 17-year-old Yegor Vetkin, 15-year-old Valentina
Vetkina, and others.
There are no people oyer 50 years of age or under 15 on
che lists of citizens whom the Germans have driven off to work
in Germany. The Germans ruthlessly exterminate all those
over 50 and below 15.
DESTRUCTION OF TOWNS, HOUSES, CULTURAL
ESTABLISHMENTS AND CHURCHES
German military units plunder and demolish dwelling
houses, cultural establishments, enterprises and churches.
These are not isolated acts committed by undisciplined
military units, but a definite prearranged plan of the German
High Command.
The demolition of towns and villages and the plunder of
the peaceful population, as well as of cultural institutions and
churches in Rzhev, Sychevka and Gzhatsk and adjoining
districts, was carried out by units of the 87th Infantry Division
of Lieut.-General Studnitz, the 129th Infantry Division of
Major-General Braun, the 72nd Infantry Division of Major-
General Mueller, the 14th Motorised Division of Major-General
Everdin, the 337th Infantry Division of Major-General
Schoenmann and the 268th Infantry Division of General
Greiner.
In Vyazma and Gzhatsk the commanders of units of the
35th Infantry Division of Major-General Mercker, the 252nd
Infantry Division of Major-General Scheffer and the 7th
Infantry Division of Major-General Roppert detailed special
squads of incendiaries and sappers who set on fire or blew up
dwellings, schools, theatres, clubs, museums, libraries, hospitals,
churches, stores and factories, leaving only ashes and ruins
along the paths of their retreat.
In Vyazma, out of 5,500 buildings only 51 wooden houses
escaped destruction. From February 20 to March 6, 1943,
the Germans effected 476 explosions which destroyed two
hospitals, one maternity home, a mother and child consultation
centre, a tuberculosis dispensary and a tuberculosis sanatorium,
two polyclinics, the city dispensaries, 15 schools, a high school,
two medical schools, the town theatre, cinema and central
public library, the Pioneers’ Club, four workers’ clubs, one
children’s home, five creches, four kindergartens, the teachers’
club, the Red Army club, the summer theatre, the collective
farmers’ club, the State Bank and local savings banks, the
offices of the Town Soviet, the district Executive Committee,
the Town Trading Department, and the District Co-operatives
Association, the People’s Court and the Attorney’s office, the
public baths and bakery. Trees in two parks were felled.
When retreating from Vyazma the Germans poisoned most
of the wells with cyanide, blew up the Dukhovskaya and
Troitskaya churches and the Egoryevsk, Zuyev, Frolov,
Suslenkov and Smolensk bridges.
In Gzhatsk, of 1,600 buildings only 300 dwelling-houses
escaped destruction. The following buildings were blown up
or burnt down : the power station, water works, hospital,
agricultural school, two school dormitories, teachers’ club,
several creches, the Lenin Kindergarten, cinema, town club,
Red Army club, bakery, public baths, the co-operative factory
(Metallist), invalids’ home, the district veterinary hospital, the
District Military Commissariat building and other State
enterprises and institutions. *
Churches in Gzhatsk were turned into stables and ware-
houses. The Germans set up ah abattoir for horned cattle in
the Blagoveshchensky Church. The Predtechenskaya Church
and Kazan Cathedral were blown up. Wells in the town were
poisoned and mined.
In Sychevka, of 1,030 dwelling-houses 770 were blown up
or destroyed by fire. The museum was burnt down ; over
5,000 paintings, including works by Repin, Levitan, Perov,
Ivazovsky, Korovin and others, sculptures by Antokolsky,
gold, silver and bronze articles by masters of the 17th, iSth and
19th centuries were destroyed in the fire. A valuable collection
of the tools of prehistoric man was destroyed in the department
of history and ethnography of the museum.
The following were blown up or destroyed by fire : three
secondary and two primary schools, vocational schools, the
collective farming school, the teachers’ club, pioneers’ club,
library, hospital, restaurant, two children’s homes, water-
pumping tower, the town polyclinic, telegraph office, radio
station and other buildings.
During the night of March 5-6, on the eve of their retreat
from Sychevka, the Germans blew up all seven churches of the
town, including the ancient “ Old Creed ” and “ Cemetery ”
Churches, together with the cathedral and monastery.
The Fascists outrage the religious feelings of the Russian
people. In Sychevka they permitted the “ Cemetery ”
Church to open for services. Worshippers gathered in the
church in holiday attire. Then the Germans surrounded the
church, drove the worshippers out and plundered them.
In the Sychevka district, of 248 villages the Germans burned
137 to the ground.
The German invaders reduced the ancient Russian town of
Rzhev to a heap of ruins. Of 5,443 buildings only 495 houses
to a greater or lesser extent escaped destruction. The Fascists
demolished or burned down the theatre, cinema, ethnographic
museum, Palace of Pioneers, the central library containing
60,000 books, three clubs, 22 primary and secondary schools,
21 kindergartens, the high school, the economic planning and
agricultural colleges, the medical assistants’ college, the
midwives’, college, the polyclinic, the women’s consultation
centre, the dispensary, hospital estate, the public baths, power
station and other establishments.
The railway equipment and rolling stock were put out of
commission. The equipment of the local factories was carried
off to Germany. The buildings of works No. 307, the alcohol
distillery, oil mill, engineering works, timber mills, silk mills,
button factory and other enterprises were burned down or
demolished. The Germans blew up the railway bridge over
the Volga and five bridges over the Kholynka river.
In Rzhev the Fascists levelled all the parks and gardens to
the last tree. They demolished the Uspensky Cathedral, the
Varvarinskaya, Edinoverscheskaya, Ekaterinskaya, Rozhdest-
venskaya, Ilyinskaya, Smolenskaya, Kazanskaya, the Second
Pokrovskaya Old Creed, the Third Pokrovskaya Old Creed, the
Predtechensk^ya, the Vladimirskaya, the Spasskaya and the
Blessed Old Creed Churches and the Polish Church. They
plundered the Pokrovskaya Church and took away everything
of any value. They set up a soldiers’ barracks in the church.
The priest Andrei Popov was shot.
Before retreating the Germans laid mines in Pokrovskaya
Church and herded about 200 non-combatants into it. Those
mm, women and children who refused to go to the church,
or were unable to reach it, were shot for “ disobedience to the
German authorities.” Having driven the people into the
church, the Fascists shut the doors tight but had not time to
blow it up. Red Army units broke into the town and prevented
them from committing this crime.
NAMES OF THOSE RESPONSIBLE
The Extraordinary State Committee for ascertaining and
investigating crimes of the German-Fascist invaders and their
associates, and damage caused by them to citizens, collective
farms, public bodies, State enterprise and institutions of the
U.S.S.R, considers the following persons responsible for the
torture and extermination of non-combatants and war prisoners,
for the abduction of Soviet people to German slavery, for the
destruction of the towns of Vyazma, Gzhatsk, Sychevka and
Rzhev, as well as many villages : —
Colonel- General Heinritz, Commander of the 4th German
Army, and the Commanders of the 7th, 35th, 98th, 252nd,
268th Infantry Divisions and Gendarmes Corps forming part
of this Army : Major-General Roppert, Major-General
Mercker, Major-General Garais, Major-General Scheffer,
General Greiner, Commander of the Gendarmes Corps General
Schiemann ;
Commander of the 9th German Army, Colonel-General
Model, Commander of the 27th Army Corps, Major-General
Weiss, Commanders of the 6th, 72nd, 87th, 102nd, 129th,
337th Infantry Divisions forming part of this Army : Lieut. -
General Grossman, Major-General Mueller, Lieut. -General
Studnitz, Major-General Fiesler, Major-General Braun, Major-
General Schoenmann, Major-General Everdin ;
Burgomaster of Vyazma, Arnold Stampf ;
Chief of Gestapo Baron Adler ;
Commandant of Sychevka, Senior-Lieutenat Kissler ;
Chiefs of war prisoners’ camps, Senior N.C.O.s Foks and
Rautenberg ;
Military Commandant of Rzhev, Major Kurtfeld ;
Commandant of Gzhatsk, Senior-Lieutenant Leimann.
The above must bear the grim responsibility and deserved
punishment for all their unspeakable crimes and villainies
committed against the peoples of the U.S.S.R.
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