I omit the next paragraph and close this quotation.
Acting upon directions of the German Military Command, the Hitlerites destroyed and annihilated the cultural-historic monuments of the Russian people connected with the life and work of the great Russian poet, Alexander Sergeivitch Pushkin.
The report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union, the original copy of which is now submitted to the Tribunal as Document Number USSR-40 (Exhibit Number USSR-40), reads as follows:
“To preserve the cultural and historical memorials of the Russian people connected with the life and creations of the gifted Russian poet and genius, Alexander Sergeivitch Pushkin, the Soviet Government, on 17 March 1922, declared the poet’s estate at Mikhailovskoye, as well as his tomb at the monastery of Svyatogorsky and the neighboring villages of Trigorskoye, Gorodischtsche, and Voronitch, a state reservation.
“The Pushkin reservation, and especially the poet’s estate at Mikhailovskoye, was very dear to the Russian people. Here Pushkin finished the third and created the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters of Eugen Onegin. Here, too, he finished his poem Gypsies, and wrote the drama Boris Godunov, as well as a large number of epic and lyrical poems.
“In July 1941 the Hitlerites forced their way into the Pushkin reservation. For 3 years they made themselves at home there, ruined everything, and destroyed the Pushkin memorials.”
I shall omit the beginning of Page 1 of the report.
“The plundering of the museum had already begun in August 1941.”
I shall also omit the next paragraph. I read on:
“In the autumn of 1943 the commander of the Pushkin Military Kommandantur, Treibholz, urged Director K. V. Afanassiev to prepare for the evacuation of all the museum valuables. All these valuables were packed into cases by the German authorities, loaded into trucks, and sent to Germany.”
I omit the next paragraph and read on:
“At the end of February 1944 the Germans turned Mikhailovskoye into a military objective and into one of the strongpoints of the German defense. The park area was dug up for combat and communication trenches; shelters were constructed. The cottage of Pushkin’s nurse was taken to pieces and next to it, and partly on its former site, the Germans constructed a large dugout, protected by five layers of timber. The Germans built a similar dugout near the former museum building.
“Prior to their retreat from Mikhailovskoye, the Germans completed the destruction and desecration of the Pushkin estate. The house-museum erected on the foundation of Pushkin’s former residence was burned down by the Germans and nothing remained but a heap of ruins. The marble plate of the Pushkin monument was smashed to pieces and thrown onto the pile of ashes. Of the other two houses standing at the entrance to the Mikhailovskoye estate, one was burned down by the Germans, the other severely damaged. The German vandals put three bullets into the large portrait of Pushkin hanging in an archway at the entrance to the Mikhailovskoye park; then they destroyed the archway.
“After their retreat from Mikhailovskoye, the fascists bombarded the village with mine throwers and artillery fire. The wooden stairs leading to the River Soret were destroyed by German mines. The old lime trees of the circular alley leading to the house were broken down; the giant elm tree in front of the house was damaged by shell fire and splinters.”
I omit the end of this page and pass on to Page 41 of the report:
“In the village of Voronitch the wooden church was burned down which dated back to Pushkin’s times and where Pushkin had a requiem sung on 7 April 1825 to commemorate the death of the great English poet, Byron. The churchyard near the church where V. P. Hannibal, one of Pushkin’s relatives, and the priest, Rayevsky, close friend of the poet, lay buried, was criss-crossed by trenches, mined, and devastated. The historical aspect of the reservation, in which the Russian people saw a symbol of Pushkin, was disfigured beyond all recognition by the Germans.
“The sacrileges perpetrated by the Germans against the national sanctuaries of the Russian people are best demonstrated by the desecration of Pushkin’s tomb. In an attempt to save the Pushkin reservation from destruction, the units of the Red Army did not defend this district, but withdrew to Novorzhev. Nevertheless, on 2 July 1941 the Germans bombarded the monastery of Svyatiye-Gory, at the adjoining walls of which is Pushkin’s tomb.
“In March 1943, long before the battle line approached the Pushkinskiye hills, the Germans began the systematical demolition of the Svyatiye-Gory monastery.”
I omit the rest of this page, and I pass on to Page 42:
“The poet’s tomb was found completely covered with refuse. Both stairways leading down to the grave were destroyed. The platform surrounding the grave was covered with refuse, rubble, wooden fragments of icons, and pieces of sheet metal.”
I omit a paragraph and quote further:
“The marble balustrade surrounding the platform was damaged by fragments of artillery shells and by bullets. The monument itself inclined at an angle of 10 to 12 degrees eastwards, as a result of a landslide following the shelling, and of the shocks caused by the explosions of German mines.
“The invaders knew perfectly well that, on entering the Pushkinskiye hills, the officers and soldiers of the Red Army would first of all visit the grave of the poet, and therefore converted it into a trap for the patriots. Approximately 3,000 mines were discovered and removed from the grounds of the monastery and its vicinity by the engineers of the Soviet Army. . . .”
The destruction of works of art and architecture in the towns of Pavlovsk, Tzarskoe-Selo, and Peterhof, figure among the worst anti-cultural crimes of the Hitlerites. The magnificent monuments of art and architecture in these towns, which had been turned into “museum towns,” are known throughout the civilized world. These art and architectural monuments were created in the course of 2 centuries. They commemorated a whole series of outstanding events in Russian history.
Celebrated Russian and foreign architects, sculptors, and artists created masterpieces which were kept in these “museum towns” and, together with valuable masterpieces of Russian and foreign art, they had been blown up, burned, robbed, or destroyed by the fascist vandals.
I read into the record Exhibit Number USSR-49 (Document Number USSR-49) which includes a statement of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union dated 3 September 1944. The excerpts which I shall quote, Your Honors, are on Pages 330-332 of the document book.
I omit the end of Page 43 and the whole of Page 44 of this statement, and begin my quotation in the middle of Page 45:
“At the time the German invaders broke into Petrodvoretz (in Peterhof) there still remained, after the evacuation, 34,214 museum exhibits (pictures, works of art, and sculptures), as well as 11,700 extremely valuable books from the palace libraries. The ground floor rooms of the Ekaterininsky and Alexandrovsky Palaces in the town of Pushkin contained assorted furniture suites of Russian and French workmanship of the middle of the 18th century, 600 items of artistic porcelain of the late 19th and 20th centuries, as well as a large number of marble busts, small sculptures, and about 35,000 volumes from the palace libraries.
“On the basis of documentary materials, the statements and testimony of eyewitnesses, the evidence of German prisoners of war and as a result of careful investigation, it has been established that: Breaking into Petrodvoretz on 23 September 1941, the German invaders immediately proceeded to loot the treasures of the palace-museums and in the course of several months removed the contents of these palaces.
“From the Big, Marly, Monplaisir, and Cottage Palaces, they looted and removed to Germany some 34,000 museum exhibits, among them 4,950 unique items of furniture of Italian, English, French, and Russian workmanship from the periods of Catherine the Great, Alexander I, and Nicholas I, as well as many rare sets of porcelain of foreign and Russian manufacture of the 18th and 19th centuries. The German barbarians