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The German authorities have handed over to Russia the first batch of archival materials relating to Soviet prisoners of war who died in the camps of Nazi Germany. The ceremony took place in Moscow on Wednesday, May 6, TASS reports.
Russian specialists gained access to information about Soviet prisoners of war and forced labor during WWII. It is stored in the federal archive of Koblenz. The archive contains data on the fate of more than 500,000 Soviet citizens. The first batch contains 20,000 digital copies. There are medical documents - X-rays, temperature sheets, military cards, personal cards, - among them.
The foreign ministers of the two countries reached an agreement on the transfer of data in 2019, in the autumn the agreement was signed between the Russian State Military Archive and the Federal Archive of Germany. Under the agreement, Russia will receive information on hundreds of thousands of dead prisoners and interned citizens of the Soviet Union.
According to German Ambassador to Moscow Géza Andreas von Geyr, data from the German archives will help clarify the fate of prisoners of war and captured persons (many of them were considered missing), as well as "contribute to reconciliation."
Russkiy Mir
reported that copies of the documents would be published on the websites of the Russian Ministry of Defense. According to official figures, more than five million Soviet soldiers were in German captivity, more than three million of them died during the war years.
Russkiy Mir
