Mass crimes of the Nazis against Soviet citizens

Planning a blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union, the German government strived for the colonization of the best East Slavic lands by the Germans, so it was not interested in preserving the local population, the systematic destruction of which occurred throughout all of the Great Patriotic War. The German command purposefully pursued the same policy in all occupied Soviet territories: death camps for prisoners of war and civilians were built en masse, local intellectuals were identified and shot, health, education and cultural institutions were closed, monuments of national and world art were removed. From the very beginning of the war, the Soviet government organized the Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of the Atrocities and Crimes of the Hitler Regime, which carefully collected eyewitness accounts, letters, memoirs, photographs of executions and torture of civilians. The featured section includes notes of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR to the German command, documents on the formation of the Extraordinary State Commission. Presented results of the Commission’s activities, such as collections of documents, reports, acts, letters, photographs, testify to numerous facts of executions and mockery of Soviet citizens, arson and looting of cultural national values.