“On 5 September 1943 the Germans burned and blew up one of the most ancient centers of Ukrainian culture, the T. G. Shevtchenko State University in Kiev, founded in 1834. In the fire perished the greatest of cultural treasures which for centuries had represented the scientific and educational bases on which the work of the university was founded; perished, the priceless documents from the historical archives of ancient manuscripts; perished, the library containing over 1,300,000 books; destroyed, the zoological museum of the university with over 2 million exhibits, together with a whole series of other museums. . . .
“. . . The German occupiers also destroyed other institutions of higher learning in Kiev; they burned and looted the majority of the medical institutions.
“In Kiev the fascist barbarians burned down the building of the Red Army Dramatic Theater . . . , the Theatrical Institute, the Academy of Music, where the instruments were burned together with the very wealthy library and all the equipment; they blew up the beautiful circus building; they burned down, with its entire equipment, the M. Gorki Theater for Juvenile Audiences; they destroyed the Jewish theater. . . .
“In the Museum of Western European and Eastern Art only some large canvases were left; the robbers had not had time to remove them from the high walls of the stairway shafts. From the Museum of Russian Art the Hitlerites carried off, together with all the other exhibits, a collection of Russian icons of inestimable value. They looted the Museum of Ukrainian Art; only 1,900 exhibits of the National Art Section of this museum were left of the original 41,000.”
I omit the remainder of this page and pass to Page 62 of my report:
“The Hitlerites plundered the T. G. Shevtchenko Museum and the historical museum. They looted the greatest monument to the Slav peoples—the Cathedral of Saint Sophia—from which they removed 14 12th century frescoes.”
I omit one paragraph.
“By order of the German Command the troops plundered, blew up, and destroyed a very ancient cultural monument—the Kievo-Pecherskaya Abbey. . . .
“The Uspenski Cathedral, built in 1075-89 by the order of Grand Duke Svjatoslav, with murals painted in 1897 by the famous painter V. V. Vereshchiagin, was blown up by the Germans on 3 November 1941.”
I omit the remainder of Page 62 and pass on to Page 63 of the report: