Soviet Extraordinary Commission — Town Index

Reference copy of the JewishGen InfoFile at jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/Extraordinary.htm

In 1942, after the Soviet Army recaptured land occupied by Germany, the USSR established an "Extraordinary State Commission" to document exactly what had happened in every Soviet locality occupied by the Nazis.  Under the direction of special NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) units, teams were to record the names of those killed.  Property damage was also recorded. In most places NKVD personnel were assisted by local residents.

These reports, handwritten in Russian, are organized geographically by republic, oblast (state), raion (county) and town.  They were stored in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution in Moscow, with relevant copies in republic area archives.

These reports were microfilmed in Moscow by Yad Vashem in 1990.  The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington has copies of these microfilms: 27 reels, [RG-22.002M].  In 1995, the Museum created a town index to the 1,450 localities covered by the reports, which appears below.

For more information, see:

• "More Resources in Israel", by Sallyann Amdur Sack, in Avotaynu VII:2 (Summer 1991).
• "New Sources at the U.S. Holocaust Museum Archives", by Vadim Altskan with Karl Modig, in Avotaynu IX:3 (Fall 1993).
• JewishGen's Soviet Extraordinary Commission Database.

Regions on each reel:

There are some known discrepancies in this town index.  A more recently-compiled finding aid to this collection, created by the USHMM's Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, can be found in the JewishGen InfoFile Soviet Extraordinary Commission — Microfilm Inventory, and at USHMM's Finding Aid for the Extraordinary State Commission microfilms.  It is a more-up-to-date effort than the work originally done by the Registry in 1995.