“The famous painted ceiling, ‘Feast of the Gods on Olympus,’ in the main hall of the Hermitage pavilion was removed and shipped to Germany.”
I omit two paragraphs:
“Great destructions were caused by the Hitlerites in the magnificent Pushkin parks, where thousands of age-old trees were cut down.
“Ribbentrop’s special purpose battalion and the Kommandos Staff Rosenberg shipped to Germany from the Pavlovsky Palace extremely valuable palace furniture, designed by Veronikhin and by the greatest masters of the 18th century.”
I omit the end of Page 49 and the beginning of Page 50 of the report.
“During their retreat the fascist invaders set fire to the Paul’s Palace. The greater part of the palace building was entirely burned down.”
I omit the next two paragraphs and quote the last paragraph, which concludes this document:
“The Extraordinary State Commission established that the destruction of art monuments in Petrodvoretz, Pushkin, and Pavlovsk was carried out by the officers and soldiers of the German Army on the direct instructions of the German Government and the High Command.”
Many large towns were destroyed by the German fascist invaders in the occupied U.S.S.R. territories. But they destroyed with particular ruthlessness the ancient Russian cities containing monuments of ancient Russian art. I quote as an example the destruction of the cities of Novgorod, Pskov, and Smolensk. Novgorod and Pskov belong to these historical centers where the Russian people laid the foundation of their state; here, in the course of centuries flourished a highly developed and individual culture. It left a rich heritage which constitutes a valuable possession of our people. Thanks to the survival of numerous monuments of ecclesiastic and civil architecture, murals, paintings, sculpture, and handicraft, Novgorod and Pskov were rightly considered the seat of Russian history.
The Hitlerite barbarians destroyed, in Novgorod, many valuable monuments of Russian and foreign art of the 11th and 12th centuries. They not only destroyed the monuments but they reduced the entire city to a heap of ruins.