There are no memory documents

In Tver, the prosecutor's office dismantles memorial boards dedicated to the executed Poles

In Tver, they are going to dismantle memorial plaques from the Medacademy building (TSMU), where the NKVD-MGB department in the Kalinin region and its internal prison were in the 1930-50s. It was in this building by the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940 that 6295 Polish prisoners of war-prisoners of the Ostashkovsky camp were shot.

We are talking about two memorial boards, the inscriptions on which say:

• “In memory of the tortured. Here in the 1930-50s there was the Office of the NKVD-MGB in the Kalinin region and its internal prison ”;

• "The memory of the Poles from the camp of the remains of the killed NKVD in Kalinin to warn the world."

The first board appeared on the building on November 23, 1991. It was established by decision of the Executive Committee of the Tver City Council of People's Deputies dated September 9, 1991 No. 372 “On the installation of a memorial plaque and a memorial sign for perpetuating the memory of the victims of repression of the 30-50s”. The initiator of the installation was the Tver branch of the Memorial company, the text was prepared by the co -chair of the company Sergey Glushkov, the sketch of the board was developed by the chief architect of the city Nikolai Semenov.

The second was established on November 22, 1992 at the initiative of the Polish organization Katyn Family, the author of the sketch was the Polish sculptor Marian Novak. The approval of the placement of this memorial plaque according to Glushkov was carried out with the city and regional administration.

The initiative to dismantle memorial plaques came from the regional cell of the Communists of Russia party in June 2019. Activists sent reports to the media about their intentions and published on their website.

Since October 2019, they want to get rid of the boards on the initiative of the regional prosecutor's office, referring to the fact that they are allegedly established in violation of federal legislation.

At the disposal of “New” was a document signed by the acting Prosecutor of the Central District of Tver Elvina Baydin with the results of the prosecutor’s audit. Its result on the Polish memorial plaque is as follows:

“Documents on the installation of a memorial plaque“ Memory of Poles from the camp of the remains of the NKVD killed in Kalinin in the sake of warning the world ”in the State Law of the“ State Archive of the Tver Region ”, the MKUK“ Tver City Archive ”of the Archive of the Tver City Duma and TSMU. According to the head of the Department of Finance of the Administration of the city of Tver dated 22. 10, 2019, information on the installation and financing at the expense of the budget of the city of Tver of memorial plaques installed on house 4 on ul. Sovetskaya G. Tver, there is no department in the department. ”

It is difficult to imagine that in 1992, the installation of an international memorial plaque could do without any documentation and was made arbitrarily. The absence of any information for the legality of the legality of this memorial plaque does not surprise. Most likely, they did not even look for this information.

In any case, another passage of the document is said about the specific result of the “prosecutor’s check”. Referring to the results of the “Conclusion of the Federal Penitentiary Service and Prosecutor's Office of the Tver Region” dated 09/09/1995, published in the book “From Cheka to the FSB” (Tver, 1998. C. 346-349), the presentation contains that “the name displayed on the memorial plaque is not based on the documentary facts related to the verdict from the camp Ostashkov in a building located at Tver, st. Sovetskaya, 4 ".

At the same time, such facts were and remained unnoticed in this document: the results of the prosecutor’s audit did not take into account the testimony of Dmitry Tokarev (in 1940, the head of the Kalinin UNKVD), carried out as part of the investigative actions of the main military prosecutor's office, investigating the Katyn business. It was Tokarev who confirmed the fact of the verdict in the Medical University building and indicated the burial place - the village of Mednaya (with the materials of the testimony and interrogation protocols, you can familiarize yourself with the book Available on the website of the Memorial Society “Kilinin, buried in Mednaya” M., 2019.).

The dismantling initiative did not bypass the Russian memorial plaque. The occasion is even more banal: the wrong post address,

Instead of st. Sovetskaya D.4 (Medacademia building), the board supposedly should be placed at ul. Sovetskaya d. 2.

In the appeal of the Tver State Medical University, the head of the city of Tver A.V. Ogokov (the document is at the disposal of “New”) reported that “at present, there is no such target part of the university buildings.” In fact, the university is a complex of buildings in which the Western outbuilding of it wears such an address.

We draw attention to the fact that in the document the dismantling of memorial boards is associated with annual visits to the Polish delegation of the university, which “does not meet the authorized goals of the university’s activities” and “creates an additional threat to the safety of students and teachers”.

Currently, the administration of TSMU sent the appeal “On the Giving of Legal Status to Memorial Boards” to the chairman of the Tver City Duma.