The majority of deaths among Soviet prisoners driven by the Nazis to work in Germany and housed in inhumane conditions were children and teenagers, Elena Malysheva, the dean of the Faculty of Archival Affairs at the Russian State University for the Humanities' Institute of History and Archives, told Sputnik on Monday, on the International Day for Protection of Children
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st June, 2020) The majority of deaths among Soviet prisoners driven by the Nazis to work in Germany and housed in inhumane conditions were children and teenagers, Elena Malysheva, the dean of the Faculty of Archival Affairs at the Russian State University for the Humanities' Institute of History and Archives, told Sputnik on Monday, on the International Day for Protection of Children.
Malysheva is a part of a Russian working group on preserving the memory of the Nazi war crimes during the Second World War.
"In Hitlerite bondage, the child mortality was especially high, simply gargantuan. As we see in archival documents, kept, for example, in the Oryol region's state archive, less than a fourth of the taken children and teenagers have returned to their motherland from the German forced labor camps. However, we get the same picture in other regions of our country," the historian, specializing in the Nazi crimes against childhood, said.
The Oryol archive sheds light on the inhumane conditions of Soviet captured workers in Germany.
"They all worked for 12, 14, 16, [or] 18 hours a day, receiving 150, 200, [or] 300 grams [5.2, 7, and 10.5 ounces] of surrogate bread and one liter [0.2 US liquid gallon] of bullion [made of] beetroot, potato, and various leftovers ... lived in camps, dirty wet barracks, animal houses," one Soviet communist party memorandum reads.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has designated 2020 as the year of memory and glory to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in WWII.
