Memory of the World: State Archives of the Russian Federation and the Alexander Pechersky Foundation presented a new Internet project

Marking the 78th anniversary of the uprising in the Nazi death camp Sobibor, the State Archives of the Russian Federation and the Alexander Pechersky Foundation presented a new Internet project - a collection of materials about Sobibor from Russian and foreign archives. In total, the portal contains more than 200 documents. Many of them were released for the first time.

The idea for this project occurred several years ago in connection with the growing interest in the camp's history. The organizers decided to create a "virtual archive" of Sobibor, which would accumulate all documents about it from the collections of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, other Russian state and institutional archives and the most valuable materials from the collections of the Alexander Pechersky Foundation.

The project also involved archives of other countries, including the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus and the Museum of Ghetto Fighters (Israel). The project features six thematic sections. At present, the compilers provide the first four sections devoted to the victims and executioners of the death camp. It includes the first reports of the Polish Underground Movement and Soviet partisans about the mass slaughter of Jews in Sobibor, the early statements of Alexander Pechersky, and the information on the participation of prisoners who escaped from Sobibor in partisan detachments and the Red Army.

The release of the last two sections is suspended because a significant part of the documents of the fifth section about the pursuit of Nazi criminals after the war is still classified. The organizers will release the sixth section, which tells about the memory of Sobibor from the 1950s to the present day. Each section starts with an introduction devoted to one or another aspect of the camp's history. All presented documents have detailed comments. The project showcases unique images that have never been published before. There are photographs of former Sobibor prisoners taken by military investigators immediately after the liberation of Eastern Poland, reports of Belarusian partisans about the "stoves for the burning of people", a photograph of Alexander Pechersky's daughter, which he kept all the war.