When the World Learned About Gas Chambers

Children of Ivanovka, a Nazi- ravaged village, Stalingrad Region, 1943 State Archive of Volgograd Oblast, Photo Catalogue, Acc. No. 19488 © Web Portal “Nazi Crimes in the USSR”

Examination of Witness Yakov Grigoriev Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive (RGAKFD), Archive No. C-3198. © Web Portal “Nazi Crimes in the USSR”, Y. A. Khaldei

The Ponary massacre of Lithuanian Jews © Public Domain

Witness Abraham Sutzkever © Public Domain

Examination of Witness Seweryna Szmaglewska RGAKFD, Archive No. C-2469, C-3199 Web Portal “Nazi Crimes in the USSR”, Y. A. Khaldei

Prisoner of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany, 29 April 1945 © AP Photo

Examination of Witness Samuel Roizman (left) RGAKFD, Archive No. C-3197 © Web Portal “Nazi Crimes in the USSR”, Y. A. Khaldei

A family from the town of Zhlobin, Belarus, liberated from a concentration camp © Web Portal “Images of War”. The Museum of the Great Patriotic War

Women, children at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp barracks, Germany, April 1945 © AP Photo

Examination of Witness Archpriest Nikolai Lomakin RGAKFD, Archive No. C-3198 © Web Portal “Nazi Crimes in the USSR”, Y. A. Khaldei

Destruction in the Hermitage Museum after an artillery bombardment, Leningrad, 1 January 1944 © RIA Novosti

Examination of Witness Joseph Orbeli State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). F. R-7021. Series. 128. Case. 279. Pg. 16. © Web Portal “Nazi Crimes in the USSR”

Children of Ivanovka, a Nazi- ravaged village, Stalingrad Region, 1943

State Archive of Volgograd Oblast, Photo Catalogue, Acc. No. 19488

“Petya was still alive. He was sitting under a bench, having covered his ears with his little hands”

The Nazis shot the inhabitants of Kuznetsovo village on false charges of harbouring partisans, and burned their houses. The oldest resident was 108 years old; the youngest was four months old. Grigoriev's wife was six in months pregnant, his two sons – nine and 16, and his daughter-in-law with two children – were among those killed. People in neighbouring villages were killed as well. About 400 people died in this village district alone.

Examination of Witness Yakov Grigoriev

Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive (RGAKFD), Archive No. C-3198.

Jacob Grigorievitch Grigoriev, a farmer from Pavlovo village, Shvartovsk Sovkhoz, Porkhovsky District, Pskov Oblast:

"We were led through the village to the last house at the outskirts.…A little later three German machine gunners came in, accompanied by a fourth carrying a heavy revolver…So we went, all 19 of us, and were lined up against a wall, including my two sons, and they began shooting at us from their machine guns. I stood right up to the wall, bending slightly.

After the first volley I fell to the floor, where I lay, too frightened to move. When they had shot all of us they left the house. When I came to, I looked round and saw my son Nikolai who had been shot and had fallen, face downwards. My second son I could not find anywhere.

I straightened my legs out from under the man who had fallen on me. At that moment my small son, who had remained alive, recognized me. He was wounded in the leg. I calmed him down: ‘Do not fear, my small son. I shall not leave you here.’

A little later the house began to burn. Then I opened the window and threw myself out of it, carrying my little boy who had been wounded in the leg. We began to creep out of the house, hiding so that the Germans could not see us, but on our way from the house we suddenly saw a high fence.

We could not move the lattice apart so we began to break it up. At that moment we were noticed by the German soldiers and they began to shoot at us. Then I whispered to my little son to hide while I ran away. I was unable to carry him and he ran a short distance and hid in the undergrowth, while I ran off. I ran a short distance and then jumped into a building near the burning house…

Then on the second day, from the same village, Kuznetzov, I met the boy Vitya who had escaped from Leningrad and was living in our village during the time of the occupation. He had also been saved by a miracle. He escaped from the fire. He told me what had happened in the second hut where my wife and son had been taken.

There matters were carried out as follows: The German soldiers, having driven the people into the hut, opened the door into the passage and proceeded to shoot from their machine guns across the threshold.

According to Vitya, people who were still half alive were burning, including my little boy, Petya, who was only nine years old. When he ran out of the hut he saw that my Petya was still alive. He was sitting under a bench, having covered his ears with his little hands.”

Soviet POWs, October 1941

“The German guards beat up all the prisoners of war”

Military doctor Eugene Alexandrovich Kivelisha was captured on 9 August 1941 near the city of Uman when his unit was surrounded after a long battle.

Eugene Kivelisha:

"We were passing the outskirts of a little village. The peaceful civilian population came to meet us, and tried to supply us with water and bread. However, the Germans would not allow us to approach the citizens, nor would they let the population approach the column of prisoners. One of the prisoners stepped 5 or 6 metres out of the column, and without any warning was killed by a German soldier shooting from a tommy gun. Several of his comrades rushed to help him thinking that he was still alive, but they too were immediately fired on without warning. Some of them were wounded and two of them were killed.

Almost every transfer from one camp to another was accompanied by the same kind of shootings and murders.

I remember once, during one of our transfers, a group of women and children attempted to give us bread and water, like the others, only the Germans would not allow them to come anywhere near us. Then one woman sent a little girl, about five years old, evidently her daughter, to the prisoners' column. This little child came quite close to the place where I had passed and when she was five or six steps away from the column, she was killed by a German soldier.

Children carry the belongings of the invaders, servicemen on leave, May 1943.

RGAKFD, Series. 2, No. 99, Ref. 8

Eugene Kivelisha:

Almost all the captives in the camp were kept outside. The food was extremely bad. In the grounds of the Uman Camp, where I spent eight days, twice a day a few fires would be lit out of doors and a thin pea soup was cooked in vats over these fires.

There was no special routine for distributing food to the prisoners of war, and the boiled soup would then be set down amongst the whole mass of people…The starving prisoners rushed up in the hope of obtaining even a minute portion of this thin, unsalted soup, cooked without fat and served without bread.

Disorder and crowding arose. The German guards, all armed with clubs as well as with rifles and automatic guns, beat up all the prisoners of war within range of their blows for the purpose of maintaining order. The Germans would often intentionally set down a small barrel of soup among a great number of people, and once again, to restore order, they would beat up the absolutely innocent people with laughter, oaths, insults, and threats.”

Dr. Hans Laternser, Defense Counsel for the General Staff and the OKW.:

“But you will have to admit that there were certain difficulties connected with food supplies which would arise if quite unexpectedly a column, such as yours, 5,000-men strong, had to be fed by rapidly advancing troops”

Eugene Kivelisha:

“Even if the German Command had been faced with this particular difficulty, the problem could always have been solved by allowing the prisoners to accept the food products which the peaceful population, the Soviet citizens, were offering them”

“In the camps we were not employed by the Germans on any work connected with the prisoners. All the Germans were interested in was the separation of people who could work from those of the prisoners who were incapable of working. We could not render the prisoners any purely medical services because of the conditions in which we ourselves existed.

The duties of sanitary supervision were entrusted to us in the camp of the town of Gaisen. It only meant that we, the captured military doctors, had to be on duty in the vicinity of the general latrine in the camp, which was nothing more than a ditch dug for this purpose, and as and when the ditch was filled up with excrement, we were forced to clean up the ground.”

The Ponary massacre of Lithuanian Jews

“They forced us toward the fire and laughed”

Abram Gerzevitch Suzkever, a Jewish Soviet writer, lived in Vilno (Vilnius), Lithuania throughout the German occupation. He witnessed how Jews were driven into the ghetto and told the court about numerous beatings, atrocities, extrajudicial killings, and murders of children. Suzkever's newborn child was one of numerous victims of the genocide. This is one of the most emotional testimonies.

Witness Abraham Sutzkever

Abram Suzkever:

"On 17 July 1941 I witnessed a large pogrom in Vilna on Novgorod Street. The inciters of this pogrom were the forenamed Schweichenberg and Martin Weiss, a certain Herring, and Schonhaber, a German Gestapo chief. They surrounded this district with Sonderkommandos. They drove all the men into the street, told them to take off their belts and to put their hands on their heads like this [demonstrating]. When that order had been complied with, all the Jews were driven along into the Lukshinaia prison. When the Jews started to march off, their trousers fell down and they couldn't walk. Those who tried to hold up their trousers with their hands were shot then and there in the street. When we walked in a column down the street, I saw with my own eyes the bodies of about 100 or 150 people who had been shot in the street. Blood streamed through the street as if a red rain had fallen.

In the first days of August 1941 a German seized me in the Dokumenskaia Street. I was then going to visit my mother. The German said to me, "Come with me, you will act in the circus." As I went along I saw that another German was driving along an old Jew, the old rabbi of this street, Kassel, and a third German was holding a young boy. When we reached the old synagogue on this street I saw that wood was piled up there in the shape of a pyramid. A German drew out his revolver and told us to take off our clothes. When we were naked, he lit a match and set fire to this stack of wood. Then another German brought out of the synagogue three scrolls of the Torah, gave them to us, and told us to dance around this bonfire and sing Russian songs. Behind us stood the three Germans; with their bayonets they forced us toward the fire and laughed. When we were almost unconscious, they left.

I was ill at the time and asleep. Suddenly I felt the lash of a whip on me. When I jumped up from my bed I saw Schweichenberg standing in front of me. He had a big dog with him. He was beating everybody and shouting that we must all run out into the courtyard. When I was out in the courtyard, I saw there many women, children, and aged persons – all the Jews who lived there. Schweichenberg had the Sonderkommando surround all this crowd and said that they were taking us to the ghetto. But, of course, like all their statements, this was also a lie. We went through the town in columns and were led toward Lutishcheva Prison. All knew that we were going to our death. When we arrived at Lutishcheva Prison, near the so-called Lutishkina market, I saw a whole double line of German soldiers with white sticks standing there to receive us. While we had to pass between them they beat us with sticks. If a Jew fell down, the one next to him was told to pick him up and carry him through the large prison gates which stood open. Near the prison I took to my heels. I swam across the River Vilia and hid in my mother's house. My wife, who was put in prison and then managed to escape later on, told me that there she saw the well-known Jewish scientist Moloch Prilutzky, who was almost dead, the president of the Jewish Society of Vilna, Dr. Jacob Wigotzky, and the young Jewish historian, Pinkus Kohn. The famous artists Hash and Kadisch were lying dead. The Germans flogged, robbed, then drove away all their victims to Ponari.

In the evening when the Germans had left, I went to the hospital and found my wife in tears. It seems that when she had had her baby, the Jewish doctors of the hospital had already received the order that Jewish women must not give birth; and they had hidden the baby, together with other newborn children, in one of the rooms. But when this commission with Muhrer came to the hospital, they heard the cries of the babies. They broke open the door and entered the room. When my wife heard that the door had been broken, she immediately got up and ran to see what was happening to the child. She saw one German holding the baby and smearing something under its nose. Afterwards he threw it on the bed and laughed. When my wife picked up the child, there was something black under his nose. When I arrived at the hospital, I saw that my baby was dead. He was still warm.”

Lev Smirnov, deputy prosecutor for the Soviet Union:

“Witness, I am interested in the following question: You said that at the beginning of the German occupation 80,000 Jews lived in Vilna. How many remained after the German occupation?

Suzkever: “After the occupation about 600 Jews remained in Vilna.”

Smirnov: “Thus, 79,400 persons were exterminated?”

Suzkever: “Yes."

Examination of Witness Seweryna Szmaglewska

RGAKFD, Archive No. C-2469, C-3199

Severina Shmaglevskaya, a Polish internee from Oswieczim Camp, fled Auschwitz in January 1945. Her hand was tattooed with a camp number, she showed it at the trial.

Shmaglevskaya described Auschwitz’s dreadful daily live: she spoke about the guards bullying pregnant women, tattooing babies, and killing children in gas chambers, as well as about the infamous ovens used to cremate the dead.

Shmaglevskaya:

“The number of children executed could only be based on the number of children's prams”

A few minutes after delivery, the child was taken from the mother, who never saw it again. After a few days, the mother had to return to work. In 1942 there were no special blocks in the camp for the children. At the beginning of 1943, when they started to tattoo the inmates, the children born in the concentration camps were also branded. The number was tattooed on their legs. (…)

This was done “because the child is very small and there was not enough room on their tiny arms for the number, which contained five digits”.

(…)

The Tribunal is probably aware of the fact that in front of the crematorium they were all sorted out. (…) During such a sorting, the youngest and the healthiest Jewish women in very small numbers entered the camp. Women carrying children in their arms or in carriages, or those who had larger children, were sent into the crematorium together with their children. The children were separated from their parents in front of the crematorium and were led separately into gas chambers.

At that time, when the greatest number of Jews were exterminated in the gas chambers, an order was issued that the children were to be thrown into the crematory ovens or the crematory ditches without previous asphyxiation with gas.

(…) The children were thrown in alive. Their cries could be heard all over the camp. It is hard to say how many there were.

(…) We don't know whether they wanted to economise on the gas or whether there was no room in the gas chambers. (…)

We, the inmates, often tried to ascertain the number of people who perished in gas chambers; but our estimates of the number of children executed could only be based on the number of children's prams which were brought to the storerooms. Sometimes there were hundreds of these carriages, but sometimes they sent thousands.

Prisoner of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany, 29 April 1945

Shmaglevskaya:

"During the Warsaw uprising, captured children from Warsaw were brought to the concentration camp. The youngest of the children was a little 6-year-old boy. The children were quartered in special barracks. When the systematic deportation of inmates from Birkenau to the interior of Germany commenced, these children were used for heavy labour. At the same time, there arrived in the concentration camps the children of Hungarian Jews, who had to work together with the children who were brought after the Warsaw uprising. These children worked with two carts, which they had to pull themselves to transport coal, iron machines, wood for floors, and other heavy things from one camp to the other. They also laboured at dismantling barracks during the liquidation of the camp. These children remained in the concentration camp until the very end. In January 1945 they were evacuated and had to march to Germany on foot under conditions as difficult as those on the front, under an SS guard, without food, covering about 30 kilometres a day.

(…)

I should also like to add a few words regarding the methods of demoralisation of the people who were interned in concentration camps. Everything that we had to suffer was the result of a whole system for degrading human beings.

The concentration camp cars in which the prisoners were transported had previously been used for cattle. When the transports were about to move, the cars were nailed shut. In each one of these cars there was a great number of people. The convoy of SS men never considered that human beings have physical needs. Some of these people happened to have the necessary pots with them, and they often had to use them for physical needs."

Examination of Witness Samuel Roizman (left)

RGAKFD, Archive No. C-3197

“He did not just kill her; he threw her alive into the oven”

Samuel Rajzman, an accountant and translator - a Polish Jew who was kept at the Treblinka extermination camp. Soviet prosecutor Lev Smirnov called Rajzman "a man from the other side". He survived because the capo, by an acquaintance, placed him as a translator. His family died In Treblinka, in front of Roajzman's eyes, - his mother, sister and two brothers. He did not see his wife and child who had died earlier - a photograph the only thing that`s left of them.

The witness described the hijacking of Jews under various pretexts, the life of the camp. He talked about how the genocide was organized - under the guise of showers, the prisoners got into the gas chambers, named the approximate number of Treblinka victims - from 10 to 12 thousand daily. Eerie details were heard for the first time in Nuremberg.

A family from the town of Zhlobin, Belarus, liberated from a concentration camp

Samuel Rajzman:

"All those who were driven from the cars were divided into groups -- men, children, and women, all separate. They were all forced to strip immediately, and this procedure continued under the lashes of the German guards' whips. Workers who were employed in this operation immediately picked up all the clothes and carried them away to barracks. Then the people were obliged to walk naked through the street to the gas chambers”.

Smirnov: I would like you to tell the Tribunal what the Germans called the street to the gas chambers.

Rajzman: It was named Himmelfahrt Street.

Smirnov: That is to say, the "street to heaven"?

Rajzman:: Yes (…)

Smirnov: Please tell us, how long did a person live after he had arrived in the Treblinka Camp?

Rajzman: The whole process of undressing and the walk down to the gas chambers lasted, for the men 8 or 10 minutes, and for the women some 15 minutes. The women took 15 minutes because they had to have their hair shaved off before they went to the gas chambers.

Smirnov: Why was their hair cut off?

Rajzman: According to the ideas of the masters, this hair was to be used in the manufacture of mattresses for German women. (…) When the persons descended from the trains, they really had the impression that they were at a very good station from where they could go to Suwalki, Vienna, Grodno, or other cities”.

Women, children at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp barracks, Germany, April 1945

Samuel Rajzman:

“Here is just one example of what was the fate of the children there. A 10-year-old girl was brought to this building from the train with her 2-year-old sister. When the elder girl saw that Menz had taken out a revolver to shoot her 2-year-old sister, she threw herself upon him, crying out, and asking why he wanted to kill her. He did not kill the little sister; he threw her alive into the oven and then killed the elder sister. (...)

Another example: They brought an aged woman with her daughter to this building. The latter was in the last stage of pregnancy. She was brought to the "Lazaret", was put on a grass plot, and several Germans came to watch the delivery. This spectacle lasted 2 hours. When the child was born, Menz asked the grandmother - that is the mother of this woman - whom she preferred to see killed first. The grandmother begged to be killed. But, of course; they did the opposite; the newborn baby was killed first, then the child's mother, and finally the grandmother".

Examination of Witness Archpriest Nikolai Lomakin

RGAKFD, Archive No. C-3198

“I saw some 30 persons lying wounded in the portico”

The Reverend Nikolai Ivanovich Lomakin, dean of churches in the city of Leningrad, spent the entire blockade in Leningrad – as well as his bishop Alexy, Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod (Alexy Simansky, later Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia). Part of the blockade time he was the rector of the St. Nicholas Church of the St. George cemetery, where he faced death every day. Together with the parishioners, he saw the most terrible episodes of the blockade: the bombing of churches and the cemetery itself, mass famine, death of hundreds of thousands of townspeople, and the desecration of churches in the Leningrad region.

It`s interesting, that Lomakin refused to take the oath at the trial, explaining that he had promised to speak the truth in 1917 when he became a priest. Later this point was exploited by Goering. But, obviously, Father Nicholas simply followed the words of Jesus Christ: " Again, you have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill your vows to the Lord.’ But I tell you not to swear at all...Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Anything more comes from the evil one.…"

Nikolai Lomakin:

"On Easter Saturday, at 5 pm Moscow time, the Luftwaffe carried out a mass raid over the city. At 5:30 two bombs fell on the southwestern part of the Church of Prince Vladimir. The faithful were at that moment waiting to approach the picture of our Lords interment. There was an enormous mass of faithful, who wished to fulfill their Christian duty. I saw some 30 persons lying wounded in the portico and in different places about the church. They lay helpless for some time, until we could give them medical aid.

It was a scene of utter confusion. People who had had no time to enter the church tried to run away and hide in the air-raid ditches while the others who had entered scattered in terror against the walls of the church, awaiting death. The concussion of the bombs was so heavy that for some period of time there was a constant fall of shattered glass, mortar, and pieces of stucco. When I came down from a room on the second floor, I was quite astounded by the scene before me. People flocked around me:

"Father, are you alive? Father, how can we understand this? How can we believe what was said about the Germans - that they believe in God, that they love Christ, that they will not harm those who believe in God? Where is their faith then, if they can shoot about like this on Easter eve?".

Destruction in the Hermitage Museum after an artillery bombardment, Leningrad, 1 January 1944

“Two air bombs and about 30 artillery shells hit the Hermitage”

Joseph Abgari Orbeli, the outstanding Soviet orientalist and academician, director of the Hermitage Museum. He spoke at the trial on February 22, earlier than other witnesses. But his story about shelling of the Hermitage by the Germans with no military purpose echoes the testimony of Nikolai Lomakin. During the blockade, Orbeli was in Leningrad and saw shells hitting the buildings of museums.

Examination of Witness Joseph Orbeli

State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). F. R-7021. Series. 128. Case. 279. Pg. 16.

Joseph Orbeli:

During many long months these buildings were under systematic air bombardment and artillery shelling…Two air bombs and about 30 artillery shells hit the Hermitage. Shells caused considerable damage to the building, and air bombs destroyed the drainage system and water conduit system of the Hermitage.

While observing the destruction done to the Hermitage I could also see, across the river, the buildings of the Academy of Science, namely: the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, the Zoological Museum, and right next to it the Naval Museum, in the building of the former Stock Exchange. All these buildings were under especially heavy bombardment of incendiary bombs. I saw the effect of these hits from a window in the Winter Palace.

Artillery shells caused considerable damage to the Hermitage. I shall mention the most important. One shell broke the portico of the main building of the Hermitage, facing the Millionnaya Street and damaged the piece of sculpture "Atlanta."

The other shell went through the ceiling of one of the most sumptuous halls in the Winter Palace and caused considerable damage there. The former stable of the Winter Palace was hit by two shells. Among court carriages of the 17th and 18th centuries that were there displayed, four from the 18th century of high artistic value, and one 19th century gilt carriage were shattered to pieces by one of these shells. Furthermore, one shell went through the ceiling of the Numismatic Hall and of the Hall of Columns in the main building of the Hermitage, and a balcony of this hall was destroyed by it.

At the same time, a branch building of the Hermitage Museum on Solyanoy Lane, namely the former Stieglitz Museum was hit by a bomb from the air which caused very great damage to the building. The building was absolutely unfit for use, and a large part of the exhibits in this building suffered damage.

I had the chance to acquaint myself in detail with the condition of the monuments of Peterhof, Tzarskoye Ssyelo, and Pavlovsk; in all those three towns I saw traces of the monstrous damage to those monuments. And all the damage which I saw, and which is very hard to describe in full because it is too great, all of it showed traces of premeditation.”

Hans Laternser, Counsel for the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces and Robert Servatius, defender of Fritz Sauckel tried to convince the witness, that the Luftwaffe did not bomb museums, but military facilities and bridges.

Laternser:Can you tell me whether near the Hermitage Palace and Winter Palace there are any industries, particularly armament industries?

Orbeli: So far as I know, in the vicinity of the Hermitage, there are no military enterprises. If the question meant the building of the General Staff, that is located on the other side of the Palace Square, and it suffered much less from shelling than the Winter Palace. The General Staff building, which is on the other side of Palace Square was, so far as I know, hit only by two shells.

Laternser: Do you know whether there were artillery batteries, perhaps, near the buildings which you mentioned?

Orbeli: On the whole square around the Winter Palace and the Hermitage there was not a single artillery battery, because from the very beginning steps were taken to prevent any unnecessary vibration near the buildings where such precious museum pieces were.

Dr. Servatius: Have you any knowledge whatever of artillery from which you can judge whether the target was the palace or the bridge beside it?

Orbeli: I never was an artillery man, but I suppose that if German artillery was aiming only at the bridge then it could not possibly hit the bridge only once and hit the palace, which is across the way, with 30 shells. Within these limits – I am an artillery man.

Dr. Servatius: That is your conviction as a non-artillery man. I have another question. The Neva River was used by the fleet. How far from the Winter Palace were the ships of the Red Fleet?

Orbeli: In that part of the Neva River there were no battle-ships which were firing or were used for such kind of service. The Neva ships were anchored in another part of the river, far from the Winter Palace.

On 26 and 27 February, Colonel Lev Smirnov, deputy prosecutor for the Soviet Union, read the report on the occupation of the USSR. During his speech, he called witnesses, citizens of the USSR and Poland, who had personally experienced what they told the tribunal: the killing of women and children by the Nazis, massacres of prisoners, the hell of Jewish ghettos and death camps, and destruction of cultural monuments. For the first time, the world learned about the scale and brutality of the atrocities of the Nazis.

Source:
Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Volume 8

When the World Learned About Gas Chambers

Lida Baarova

Leni Riefenstahl

Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson

Hugo Boss

Dmitry Merezhkovsky and ZinaidaGippius

Mikhail Prishvin

Edith Piaf

Charles Aznavour

Olga Chekhova

Marlene Dietrich

Erich Maria Remarque

Marcel Marceau

Evelyn Waugh

Jean Gabin

Rebecca West

Billy Wilder

Elsa Triolet and Louis Aragon

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Lida Baarova

Leni Riefenstahl

Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson

Hugo Boss

Dmitry Merezhkovsky and ZinaidaGippius

Mikhail Prishvin

Edith Piaf

Charles Aznavour

Olga Chekhova

Marlene Dietrich

Erich Maria Remarque

Marcel Marceau

Evelyn Waugh

Jean Gabin

Rebecca West

Billy Wilder

Elsa Triolet and Louis Aragon