The book of memory of Soviet citizens who have fallen in Austria during the Second World War was handed over to the Presidential Library

A ceremony of official contribution of the book entitled “The Soviet citizens who died in Austria during the Second World War, and their burial places. Book of Memory” to the Presidential Library stock was held on March 21, 2017, in the Presidential Library.

The “Memory Book” is a unique project of the Russian-Austrian commission of historians. The publication consists of two volumes and contains documentary information about the names and whereabouts of the graves of Soviet citizens buried in Austria. According to the author of the publication Peter Sicksle, he has begun work on the book in 1992 and continued it for more than 20 years.

General Director of the Presidential Library Alexander Vershinin mentioned that owing to the enthusiasm and research work of Austrian and Russian historians, an extensive array of sources about the burial places of our compatriots in Austria was collected. The book contains about 1200 pages, 216 photographs and brief descriptions of Soviet military graves in Austria - a total of almost 80 thousand names of our compatriots.

“There are hundreds of thousands of lives of our people, who died in Austria during the Second World War, as well as the lives of their relatives behind these names. This is case in point of how to save, reinstate and disclose evidences of history in spite of those who prefer to be unaware of or to abolish these today,” - Alexander Vershinin pointed out.

Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Kirillov, in turn, pointed out that owing to the work of Sicksle and his assistants “many generations of relatives and friends can find out more about the history of our soldiers who defended Europe against the fascists.”