Guest: Paula Chan on the Extraordinary State Commission and its investigations in the Nazi atrocities in the Soviet Union. The post Soviet Investigation of Nazi War Crimes appeared first on The Eurasian Knot.
In 1942, as the Red Army pushed the Wehrmacht out of the USSR, the Soviet government established the “Extraordinary State Commission.” Under the Commission’s direction, Soviet officials, aided by an estimated 7 million locals, documented incidents of war crimes, property damage, and the names of victims and survivor testimonies of Nazi atrocities. Compiled reports served as evidentiary material in the Nuremberg trials. The Commission’s documentary record is one of the largest depositories of material about the Holocaust. Yet, these materials have only been accessible to researchers since 1991. What do these files contain? What kinds of testimonies did people give? And how do the Commission’s findings shed light on the Soviet attitude toward the Holocaust. The Eurasian Knot sat down with Paula Chan to pull back the many layers to the Holocaust in the Soviet Union.
Guest:
Paula Chan is a postdoctoral research fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford. Her current book manuscript, “Eyes on the Ground: Soviet Investigations of the Nazi Occupation,” examines the Extraordinary State Commission established by Stalin’s government in 1942 to gather documentation of Nazi war crimes.
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