Action of the Germans in the U.S.S.R

Abstract

ON behalf of the Soviet Scientists Antifascist Committee, V. Komarov, president of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., A. Bogomolets, president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and several members of both academies, have sent a message to the Faraday Society, in the course of which they record some of the devastation which has been the regular accompaniment of the German retreat in the U.S.S.R. "Wherever the German army has been, it has brought death and slavery to the people, and destruction of culture."Prof. Nikolai Burdenko, of the Academy of Sciences, U.S.S.R., who personally investigated the crimes of the Germans in the city and district of Orel, refers to the state of psychological stupor of both victims of the German occupation and of medical men treating them. Referring to the material damage, it is stated that when they retreated from Smolensk, the Germans burned down the Teaching, Nutritional and Agricultural Institutes, destroyed the Finance, Co-operative, and Railway Technical Institutes, and the Institute of Telegraph and Telephone Communications, and looted valuable collections from Smolensk museums. In the town of Staline, they wrecked the Medical Institute and burned down all the buildings of the Industrial Institute where 15,000 students studied. In Kiev, a number of large buildings, among them the University, with its library, museums and laboratories, were destroyed. All the Kiev museums, libraries, archives, laboratories and research institutions were looted, according to Alexander Palladin, vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Alexander Brodsky, of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, states that the Germans blew up and burned the Mining Institute, with its library, at the University Institute of Applied Chemistry, and looted and destroyed a number of other research institutes at Dnepropetrovsk. Prof. Peter Budnikov, of the Ukrainian Academy, who visited Kharkov, states that the Germans destroyed the Institutes of Applied Chemistry and of Electrotechnical Engineering, and other institutes.