A selection of photos from one Russian site which gathered a lot of amazing and high-quality images of World War II time.

1. The Jews tied up and secured by Lithuanian secondary guards. 1941.

2. The column of Jewish women and children under the escort of Lithuanian “self-defense”. 1941. Lithuania, the USSR.

3. The Jewish residents of Siauliai before being sent to be shot. July 1941, Lithuania, the USSR.

4. A famous photograph of the execution of the last Jew in Vinnytsia, made by an officer of the German Einsatzgruppen, who was engaged in the executions of people that were to be destroyed (Jews first of all). The title of the photo was written on the reverse side.

Vinnytsia was occupied by German troops on July 19, 1941. A part of the Jews living in the city managed to evacuate. The remaining ones were enclosed in a ghetto. On July 28, 1941, 146 Jews were shot in the city. In August, executions resumed… On September 22, 1941, most prisoners of the Vinnytsia ghetto were destroyed (about 28.000 people). Only craftsmen, workers and technicians stayed alive as their work was needed to the German occupation authorities.

5. Slovak Jews being sent to Auschwitz. March 1942, Poprad Station, Slovakia.

6. Rabbis in Auschwitz.

7. Jewish rabbis in the Warsaw Ghetto.

8. SS soldiers guarding the column of captive Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. The liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto after an uprising.

The photo is taken from Jürgen Stroop’s report to Heinrich Himmler in May of 1943. The German original title reads: “forcibly pushed out of the shelter”. One of the most famous photographs of World War II period.

9. Faye Schulman and Soviet partisans in the forest. Faye Schulman was born in a large family in Poland on November 28, 1919. On August 14, 1942 the Germans killed 1850 Jews from the Lenin ghetto, including her parents, sister and younger brother. They spared only 26 people, one of them was Faye. Later she fled to the forests and joined the partisan group, consisting mainly of fugitive Soviet prisoners of war.

10. The rank of Red Army prisoners of war. 1941.

The caption says: “A woman stands among captive Soviet soldiers – even she stopped resisting. This is the woman who made Soviet soldiers fiercely resist till the last bullet. ”

11. A German patrol caught two disguised Soviet soldiers. September 1941, Kiev, Ukraine.

12. Soviet prisoners of war murdered on the streets of Kiev. One of them is dressed in a tunic and breeches, the other one is in underwear. Both are unshod, feet are dirty as they walked barefoot. Both have exhausted faces. Eyewitnesses recall that when prisoners were driven along the streets of Kiev, guards shot those who could not walk.

The picture is taken by German war photographer Johannes Hele 10 days after the fall of Kiev.

13. Soviet prisoners of war under the supervision of the SS men cover a piece of Babi Yar with sand so that to bury those who were shot. The picture is taken by Johannes Hele 10 days after the fall of Kiev.

Babi Yar is a large ravine on the northern edge of Kiev which achieved notoriety as a place of mass executions of civilians and prisoners of war carried by German occupying forces. Here were shot 752 patients of Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital, at least 40.000 Jews, about 100 sailors of the Pinsk Military Flotilla, arrested partisans, political workers, underground workers, members of the NKVD, 621 members of the OUN, at least 5 gypsy camps. According to various estimates, from 70.000 to 200.000 people were shot at Babi Yar in 1941-1943.

Half covered with sand trees and shrubs at the bottom indicate that the slopes of the ravine were blown up. Some of the prisoners are in civilian clothes. These are probably those who managed to change clothes when escaping from captivity but who were detected. Along the edges of the ravine are the SS guards with rifles on shoulders and helmets on belts.

14. Soviet soldiers captured near Vyazma town. October 1941.

15. A captive Soviet colonel. The Barvenkovsky Region.

In late May of 1942, the 6th and the 57th Soviet armies were surrounded by the enemy near Barvenkovo. As a result of an unsuccessful attack, about 170.000 soldiers and officers of the Red Army were killed and taken prisoners.

16. A captive soldier showing the Germans commissars and communists.

17. Red Army POWs in a camp.

18. Soviet prisoners of war. Two wounded – in the center.

19. A German guard lets his dogs have fun with a “living toy”.

20. Soviet workers in forced labor during a break. 1943, the province of Upper Silesia, Germany.

21. Red Army prisoners laboring in winter.

22. Captive Lieutenant-General Vlassov, a future head of the Russian Liberation Army, interrogated by Colonel-General Lindemann after being taken prisoner. August 1942.

23. Soviet prisoners of war with German officers in Germany. Neutralization of unexploded bombs.

24. A Soviet prisoner of war, after the complete liberation of the Buchenwald camp by the U.S. troops, points at a former security guard brutally beaten the prisoners. 14.04.1945.

25. The U.S. Army doctor examines a Soviet forced laborer ill with tuberculosis. He was driven to the coal mines in the city of Dortmund, Germany. 30.04.1945.

26. A Soviet child next to his murdered mother. A concentration camp for civilians, Belarus. March 1944.

27. The children liberated from the Auschwitz concentration camp. January 1945.

28. Captive German soldiers. Leningrad, 1942.

29. Captive Frenchmen from the SS and the Wehrmacht stand in front of General Leclerc, the commander of the 2nd Armored Division of the Free French forces.

Captives held themselves with dignity and even defiance. When General Leclerc called them traitors and said: “How could you, the French, wear someone else’s uniform?” one of them replied: “You yourselves wear someone else’s uniform – the American one!” (the division was equipped by the Americans). They say it angered Leclerc, and he gave orders to shoot the prisoners.

30. German POWs in the queue for the issue of food. The South of France. September 1944.

31. German prisoners of war are lead along Majdanek, a German Nazi concentration camp. They look at the remains of prisoners lying on the ground and see crematorium ovens. The outskirts of the Polish city of Lublin. 1944.

32. The return of German prisoners of war from Soviet captivity. The Germans arrived at the Friedland camp. 1955. Germany.

33. Captive young German soldiers of the “Hitler Youth” under the escort of the Military Police of the 3rd U.S. Army. These guys were captured in December of 1944 during the operation in the Ardennes. The picture is taken on January 7, 1945.

34. A fifteen-year-old German antiaircrafter of the Hitler Youth, Hans Georg Henke, taken prisoner by the soldiers of the 9th U.S. Army in the city of Giessen, Germany. 29.03.1945.

35. Fourteen-year-old German teenagers, the soldiers of the Hitler Youth, captured by the 3rd U.S. Army in April of 1945. Berstadt, the province of Hessen, Germany. April 1945.

36. Adolf Hitler in the garden of the Reich Chancellery awards the young members of the Hitler Youth. This is one of his last pictures. In the center are the young natives of Silesia: the second on the right is 12-year-old Alfred Czech and the third one – 16-year-old Wilhelm Hubner, also known for the picture with Dr. Goebbels taken in Laubane. 23.03.1945.

37. Adolf Hitler awards the young members of the Hitler Youth.

38. A boy from the Hitler Youth armed with a grenade launcher. The “Third Reich’s last hope”.

39. Sergeant Francis Daggett with a German soldier of only 15 years old. Kronach, Germany. 27.04.1945.

40. A column of prisoners on the streets of Berlin. In the foreground is “Germany’s last hope”, the boy from the Hitler Youth and the Volkssturm. May 1945.