“In Order Number 0973/41, General Hodt, commander of the German 17th Army, demands that his subordinates thoroughly assimilate that misanthropic notion so typical of the thick-skulled fascists, that the ‘sound feeling of vengeance and repulsion towards everything Russian should not be suppressed among the men but, on the contrary, encouraged in every way.’ ”
True to their custom of destroying universally recognized cultural valuables, the Hitlerites everywhere on the Soviet territory occupied by them, devastated and mostly burned libraries, from the small club and school libraries up to and including the most valuable collections of manuscripts and books, containing unique bibliographical valuables.
I omit a paragraph and continue the quotation:
“The Hitlerites looted and then set on fire the famous Borodino Museum, the historical exhibits of which related to the struggle against the armies of Napoleon in 1812, particularly dear to the Russian people. The invaders looted and set fire to the Pushkin House Museum in the hamlet of Polotnyany Zavod.
“In Kaluga the Hitlerites assiduously destroyed the exhibits in the house-museum in which the eminent Russian scientist K. E. Tsiolkovsky, whose services in the field of aeronautics enjoy world-wide fame, lived and worked.
“The fascist vandals used Tsiolkovsky’s portrait as a target for revolver practice. Extremely valuable models of dirigibles, together with plans and instruments, were trampled underfoot. One of the museum rooms was turned into a hen coop and the furniture burned. One of the oldest agricultural institutions in the U.S.S.R., the Shatilov selection station in the Orel district, was destroyed by the invaders, who blew up and consigned to the flames 55 buildings of this station, including the agrochemical and other laboratories, the museum, the library containing 40,000 volumes, the school, and other buildings. Even greater frenzy was shown by the Hitlerites when looting the cultural institutions and historical monuments of the Ukraine and of Bielorussia.”
I omit two paragraphs and pass on to the last paragraph of this quotation:
“There was no limit to the desecration by the Hitlerite vandals of the monuments and homes representing Ukrainian history, culture, and art. Suffice to mention, as an example of the constant attempts to humiliate the national dignity of the Ukrainian people, that after plundering the Korolenko Library in Kharkov, the occupiers used the books as paving stones for the muddy street in order to facilitate the passage of German motor vehicles.”
The German vandals treated with particular hatred these cultural monuments which were most dear to the Soviet people. I shall quote several instances:
The Hitlerites plundered Yasnaya Polyana, where one of the greatest writers, Leo Tolstoy, was born, lived, and worked.