Hello,
This is a question for Spartacus: On November 2nd, 1942 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet formed the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), which was responsible for investigating Nazi war crimes against Soviet citizens (most of them Jewish). After doing some research, I was surprised by the scale of the effort, with around 32,000 staff producing tens of thousands of files during and after the war. Since the archives are still in Russian and only became available after 1991, I haven’t seen it discussed that much in scholarship about the Holocaust and WW2.
I was wondering if you had more information about this monumental research and archiving effort? Are there any similar efforts by other allied powers to document war crimes? And what was the lasting impact of the ChGK?
Thanks,
Guy