Figure 1.--Here we see Red Army troops and children in liberated Orel/Oryol tryng out German felt boots after the Germans failed at Kursk. The press caption read, "Ersatz Boots Left Behind by Nazis: Retreating Germns left behind the ersatz felt boots which these Soviet school children are showing Red Army men in Gzhatsk, liberated from the Nazis. School kids around Orel are now getting their cance to look over the things the Nazis are leaving behind, as the aftermath of their abottive summer offensive finds them moving out of this vital salient." The photograph was dated August 5, 1943, but surely that can not be accuate, notice the snow onthe ground. The American editor who wrote the caption had no real idea of German occupation policies. In the East as the Germans drve into the Soviet Union hey did not maintain schools in the occupied areas. The goal of General Plan Ost was to destroy or enslave the Slavic people, not educate them. Orel not only had a dark history during the German occupation. The Soviet NKVS Oryol Prison was being used as adetention place incarceration for political prisoners, including Christian Rakovsky, Maria Spiridonova, Olga Kameneva and 160 other prominent political prisoners. Stlin ordered the NKVD to sumarily shot them in the Medvedev forest outside Orel (September 11, 1941). The Wehrmacht ocupied Orel (October 3). The Red Army two weeks after Kursk liberated Orel as we see here (August 5, 1943). The city was almost completely destroyed. |
