“In their attempt to eradicate the culture of the Bielorussian
people, the German fascist invaders destroyed every cultural and
educational institution in Minsk. . . . The libraries of the
Academy of Science, containing 30,000 volumes, of the State
University, of the Polytechnical Institute, and the
medico-scientific library and the public library of the city, A.
S. Pushkin, were carried away to Germany.
“The Hitlerites destroyed the Bielorussian State University
together with the Zoological, the Geological, and Mineralogical,
the Historical, and Archaeological Museums as well as the
Medical Institute with all its clinics. They also demolished the
Academy of Sciences with its nine institutes.”