Commission to Investigate the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders in the Territory of the Chaplynka District at the Executive Committee of the Chaplynka District Council of Toilers’ Deputies, Chaplynka Village (Chaplynka District, Mykolaiv Region, from 1944 Kherson Region)

The fonds’ inventories are systematized chronologically. The fonds house proceedings of district extraordinary state commissions and other materials (minutes of interrogations of witnesses, write-ups of the analysis of forensic medical experts, photographs of burial sites and exhumed bodies, etc.) containing data on the number of Jews who perished at the hands of the occupiers, the circumstances and places of shootings, on the German officers in charge of these, their local accomplices, etc. Chronological information on the occupation of population centers of the Chaplinka district includes reports on the Nazi murders of Jewish families in the villages of Grigor’evka and Preobrazhenka. The documents are in Russian. These entities were established in 1943-44 pursuant to an edict (2 November 1942) of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR. The regional commission was in charge of the city and district extraordinary state commissions and in turn was subordinate to Ukraine’s republic-level Extraordinary State Commission, and included representatives of the public prosecutor’s office and investigative organs, medical experts, representatives of public organizations, and Soviet and party workers. The extraordinary state commissions were tasked with investigating the criminal activities of the occupiers, assessing the material damages they had caused to enterprises, institutions, and citizens of the Kherson region, and also compiling lists of those shot and forcibly removed, as well as of war criminals. The extraordinary state commissions ceased activities in late 1945