Rare unseen photos showing Sevastopol after the Nazi occupation

May 08 2019

Russia Beyond

Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation

The Russian Defense Ministry has for the first time published photographs taken immediately after the liberation of the Crimean city.

Sevastopol, a city in the southwest of the Crimean Peninsula, found itself under occupation at the very beginning of World War 2. In fact, its occupation marked the start of the Great Fatherland War - in 1941 the city was the first to come under attack from Hitler's Air Force because the Black Sea Fleet was based there.

"The Crimea should be cleared of all outsiders and settled by Germans," Adolf Hitler said on July 19, 1941. For 250 days Sevastopol mounted a defense, but then it fell, and came under the command of the SS. The whole population was re-registered, punitive detachments scoured the city and over 20 camps for prisoners of war almost immediately appeared on its territory. The occupation lasted until May 9, 1944.

Seventy-five years on, the Ministry of Defense has published previously unseen archive documents and photographs showing the liberation of the city.

The inscriptions on the backs of the photographs were made by one of the first army officers to walk through the ruins of liberated Sevastopol.