“We obtained rich trophies in the library of the Ukrainian Academy of Science, treasuring the rarest Persian, Abyssinian, and Chinese manuscripts, Russian and Ukrainian chronicles, the initial copies of books printed by the first Russian printer, Ivan Fyodorov, and rare editions of works by Shevtchenko, Mitzkevitch, and Ivan Franko.”
Side by side with the barbarous destruction and looting of villages, towns, and national cultural monuments, the Hitlerites also mocked the religious feelings of the believers among the Soviet population. They burnt, looted, destroyed, and desecrated on Soviet territory 1,670 Greek Orthodox churches, 237 Roman Catholic churches, 69 chapels, 532 synagogues, and 258 other buildings belonging to religious institutions.
They destroyed the Uspensky Church of the famous Kievo-Petchersky Monastery, built in 1073, and with it eight monastery buildings. At Tchernigov, the Germano-fascist armies destroyed the ancient Borisoglebsky Cathedral, built at the beginning of the 12th century, the Cathedral of the Efrosiniev Monastery of Polotzk, built in 1160, and the Church of Paraskeva-Piatniza-in-the-Market, an extremely valuable monument of 12th century Russian architecture. At Novgorod the Hitlerites destroyed the Antoniev, Khutynsky, Zverin, Derevyanitzky and other ancient monasteries, the famous church of Spas-Nereditza, and a series of other churches.
The German soldiers scoffed at the religious feelings of the people. They dressed up in church vestments, kept horses and dogs in the churches, and made bunks out of the icons. In the ancient Staritzky Monastery, units of the Red Army found the naked bodies of tortured Red Army prisoners of war, stacked in piles.
The damage inflicted on the Soviet Union as a result of the destructive and predatory activities of German army units is extremely great.
The German armies and occupational authorities, carrying out the orders of the criminal Hitlerite Government and of the High Command of the Armed Forces, destroyed and looted Soviet towns and villages and industrial establishments and collective farms seized by them; destroyed works of art, demolished, stole, and removed to Germany machinery, stocks of raw and other materials and finished goods, art and historic treasures, and carried out the general plundering of the urban and rural population. In the occupied territories of the Soviet Union 88 million persons lived before the war; gross industrial production amounted to 46 million rubles (at the fixed Government prices of 1926-27); there were 109 million head of livestock, including 31 million head of horned cattle and 12 million horses; 71 million hectares of cultivated land, and 122,000 kilometers of railway lines.