“In the village of Voronitch the wooden church was burned down
which dated back to Pushkin’s times and where Pushkin had a
requiem sung on 7 April 1825 to commemorate the death of the
great English poet, Byron. The churchyard near the church where
V. P. Hannibal, one of Pushkin’s relatives, and the priest,
Rayevsky, close friend of the poet, lay buried, was
criss-crossed by trenches, mined, and devastated. The historical
aspect of the reservation, in which the Russian people saw a
symbol of Pushkin, was disfigured beyond all recognition by the
Germans.
“The sacrileges perpetrated by the Germans against the national
sanctuaries of the Russian people are best demonstrated by the
desecration of Pushkin’s tomb. In an attempt to save the Pushkin
reservation from destruction, the units of the Red Army did not
defend this district, but withdrew to Novorzhev. Nevertheless,
on 2 July 1941 the Germans bombarded the monastery of
Svyatiye-Gory, at the adjoining walls of which is Pushkin’s
tomb.
“In March 1943, long before the battle line approached the
Pushkinskiye hills, the Germans began the systematical
demolition of the Svyatiye-Gory monastery.”