FOR POSTERITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 August 1943, Page 4

FOR POSTERITY

RELICS OF EPIC STAND AT STALINGRAD. BEING PRESERVED IN STATE MUSEUM. (By Y. Rykachev, in “Soviet War News.”) The Moscow State Museum of History is collecting and studying material connected with the epic of Stalingrad. An extensive programme of work has been mapped out. The museum workers have been sent to various army units to obtain information through direct contact with the participants. The object is to collect all details about the defence of the city and about the operations connected with the encircling of the enemy forces and their liquidation. The Museum of History is interested not only in the superbly conceived and executed plan of operation, but also in the personal experiences of all the fighters.

There is no doubt that its workers will bring back treasures of information which will serve as a basis not only for scientific works, but for films, plays, paintings, poems and works of fiction. The most important thing is that the museum is hot on the trail of events while they are still fresh in the minds of the participants.

Soviet newsreels cameramen and newspaper correspondents, courageous and faithful chroniclers of the war, have already, during the battle itself, recorded the facts of the Stalingrad epic on their films. Under enemy fire, with complete disregard of danger, they took their cameras to the. hottest sector. The museum will preserve these photographic records under conditions that will ensure their permanent existence.

The most distant descendants of the Stalingrad heroes will be able not only to read about, but to see the deeds of their famous ancestors. Photographs will tell them the story of the barbaric destruction which the enemy, in his impotent rage, wrought in this wonderful city, and the restoration of Stalingrad by the people of the Soviet Union.

The museum library is preparing a huge album entitled “Heroic Stalingrad.” It will contain newspaper cuttings, correspondence and stories, all written by eye-witnesses of, and participants in, these great events. The museum already possesses some four thousand cuttings, and the collection is being extended. It has set itself the task of handing down to posterity the Stalingrad epic in all its living reality. Its record will witness to the eternal glory of the Red Army and to the eternal disgrace of the Hitlerite bandits.