“The marble balustrade surrounding the platform was damaged by
fragments of artillery shells and by bullets. The monument
itself inclined at an angle of 10 to 12 degrees eastwards, as a
result of a landslide following the shelling, and of the shocks
caused by the explosions of German mines.
“The invaders knew perfectly well that, on entering the
Pushkinskiye hills, the officers and soldiers of the Red Army
would first of all visit the grave of the poet, and therefore
converted it into a trap for the patriots. Approximately 3,000
mines were discovered and removed from the grounds of the
monastery and its vicinity by the engineers of the Soviet
Army. . . .”
The destruction of works of art and architecture in the towns of
Pavlovsk, Tzarskoe-Selo, and Peterhof, figure among the worst
anti-cultural crimes of the Hitlerites. The magnificent monuments of art
and architecture in these towns, which had been turned into “museum
towns,” are known throughout the civilized world. These art and
architectural monuments were created in the course of 2 centuries. They
commemorated a whole series of outstanding events in Russian history.
Celebrated Russian and foreign architects, sculptors, and artists
created masterpieces which were kept in these “museum towns” and,
together with valuable masterpieces of Russian and foreign art, they had
been blown up, burned, robbed, or destroyed by the fascist vandals.
I read into the record Exhibit Number USSR-49 (Document Number USSR-49)
which includes a statement of the Extraordinary State Commission of the
Soviet Union dated 3 September 1944. The excerpts which I shall quote,
Your Honors, are on Pages 330-332 of the document book.
I omit the end of Page 43 and the whole of Page 44 of this statement,
and begin my quotation in the middle of Page 45:
“At the time the German invaders broke into Petrodvoretz (in
Peterhof) there still remained, after the evacuation, 34,214
museum exhibits (pictures, works of art, and sculptures), as
well as 11,700 extremely valuable books from the palace
libraries. The ground floor rooms of the Ekaterininsky and
Alexandrovsky Palaces in the town of Pushkin contained assorted
furniture suites of Russian and French workmanship of the middle
of the 18th century, 600 items of artistic porcelain of the late
19th and 20th centuries, as well as a large number of marble
busts, small sculptures, and about 35,000 volumes from the
palace libraries.
“On the basis of documentary materials, the statements and
testimony of eyewitnesses, the evidence of German prisoners of
war and as a result of careful investigation, it has been
established that: Breaking into Petrodvoretz on 23 September
1941, the German invaders immediately proceeded to loot the
treasures of the palace-museums and in the course of several
months removed the contents of these palaces.
“From the Big, Marly, Monplaisir, and Cottage Palaces, they
looted and removed to Germany some 34,000 museum exhibits, among
them 4,950 unique items of furniture of Italian, English,
French, and Russian workmanship from the periods of Catherine
the Great, Alexander I, and Nicholas I, as well as many rare
sets of porcelain of foreign and Russian manufacture of the 18th
and 19th centuries. The German barbarians stripped the walls of
the palace rooms of the silks, Gobelin tapestries, and other
decorative materials which adorned them.
“In November 1941 the Germans removed the bronze statue of
Samson, the work of the sculptor Koslovsky, and took it away.
Having looted the museum treasures, the Hitlerites set fire to
the Big Palace, created by the famous and gifted architect
Bartolomeo Rastrelli.
“Upon their withdrawal from Petrodvoretz”—I have skipped a
paragraph—“the Germans wrecked the Marly Palace by
delayed-action mines. This palace contained very delicate
carvings and stucco moldings. The Germans wrecked the Monplaisir
Palace of Peter the Great. They destroyed all the wooden parts
of the pavilion and of the galleries, the interior decorations
of the study, the bedroom and the Chinese room.
“During their occupation, they turned the central parts of the
palace, that is, the most valuable from the historical and
artistic viewpoint, into bunkers. They turned the western
pavilion of the palace into a stable and a latrine. In the
premises of the Assembly Building the Germans tore up the floor,
sawed through the beams, destroyed the doors and windowframes,
and stripped the panelling off the ceiling.”