More than a thousand German documents from the period of occupation were declassified in the Republic of Crimea for the first time

CrimeaPRESS reports:

More than a thousand sheets of archival documents have been declassified. This is the largest array of documents identified, declassified and accessible to researchers in recent years on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula. <…> Most of them are in German— quotes Igor Vereshkov TASS.

According to him, the documents show the attitude of the occupiers towards the local population as a labor force. “There are a number of materials that talk about the abduction of local residents to Germany. One of the documents illustrates how in the city of Dzhankoy and the region in 1942, 10,650 people were kidnapped. There were mass kidnappings in other regions of Crimea,” Vereshkov said.

Also, he noted, one of the documents concerned the organization of education on the peninsula — clear instructions were given on the organization of elementary primary three-year education, which prescribed that “learning should be carried out orally, without the use of textbooks.” Further education of children could only be carried out with the consent of the German military commandant’s office.

Professor of the Department of Russian History, Crimean Federal University. V.I. Vernadsky Oleg Romanko is confident that the documents will greatly help historians.

This is a valuable database containing a lot of interesting information about life under the Nazi occupation in Crimea, <...> in Simferopol, Bakhchisarai, Dzhankoy. Lots of new facts [база] will add,” Romanko noted.

Export of cultural property

The researcher also considers useful a declassified document about the connection between the German commandant’s offices and the headquarters of the Nazi criminal Alfred Rosenberg, who also supervised the export of cultural property from the USSR. “There is a small document where the commandant’s offices are ordered to assist Rosenberg’s headquarters and its agencies, in particular in Simferopol. This also indicates that the commandant’s offices occupied a very important niche in the field of repressive policies and the export of cultural property,” Romanko noted.

Crimea was occupied by German and Romanian troops in November 1941. Released in April-May 1944 after a strategic offensive operation by the Red Army. According to various estimates, about 1 million people died during the defense and liberation of the peninsula.

source: TASS