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Vladimir Putin sent greetings to the organisers, participants and visitors of the federal archive online project Crimes of the Nazis and their Accomplices against the Civilian Population of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.
The message reads in part:
“This project marking the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory has special historical, moral and universal human value. In the past few years, its organisers and participants, including the Federal Archival Agency, the Federal Security Service, the Defence Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, have located and declassified a huge number of archive materials, such as documents, photos and video footage providing new evidence of the horrendously brutal crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War. The invaders victimised millions of absolutely innocent people of various ages, professions and ethnic groups. These people were shot, tortured to death in concentration camps, and died of hunger and disease.
There can be no justification or forgiveness for these abominable crimes that were unequivocally condemned by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. They have no statute of limitations. We, as well as the future generations must comprehend the terrible destructive consequences wrought by any connivance at nationalism, xenophobia, an aggressive policy of enslavement and murder of civilians, and we must cherish the historical truth about the most brutal war of the 20th century.
I am confident that this large-scale project will attract broad public attention and will make it possible to provide an objective assessment of many events of the war. It will undoubtedly help representatives of the patriotic search movement in their active and highly needed work to perpetuate the memory of the fallen.”
The online project Crimes of the Nazis and their Accomplices against the Civilian Population of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 was posted on the Federal Archival Agency’s website on September 3, the anniversary of the end of World War II. The publication now contains over 2,600 documents, including ten hours of audio recordings and three hours of video footage from federal agencies’ archives and archival institutions of Russian regions. A considerable part of these files was declassified specifically for the project. This is only the beginning of the project, which will continue to expand.
September 3, 2020