The CHGK Collection: Documentation collected by the State Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of Nazi War Crimes in the Soviet Union, 1943-1945

The State Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of Nazi War Crimes (ChGK) was established in the Soviet Union in 1942. Its representatives operated in places that had been occupied by the Nazis a short time after their liberation, and the reports prepared by the Commission regarding the places it investigated describe the Nazi crimes in detail. The ChGK (in Yad Vashem terminology: “the State Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of Nazi War Crimes”) was located in Moscow, with subcommittees operating in every region within the Soviet Union. The task of the Commission was to gather documents and prepare files from the documentation received from the subcommittees that had been set up in conjunction with the regional, district, and village councils. The members of the committees interviewed the residents of every town and village and received information on what had happened in these places during the war years. The documentation collected helped in the preparation of the war crimes trials of Nazis held in various places in the Soviet Union during the 1940s. The ChGK ceased its activities in 1946. A printed guide in russian languages. Description of most of the files available on IDEA ALM system at Yad Vashem Archives reading room. The collection contains documentation regarding the history of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, and serves as a source of information concerning the extermination of the Jews in the towns and villages throughout the Soviet Union that had been under Nazi occupation. The collection includes lists of those who perished, lists of Nazi criminals, lists of collaborators, maps, sketches of extermination sites, photographs of the faces of the criminals (low quality), investigative reports, surveys, protocols prepared by the investigators, statistical data and more. This documentation provides a detailed picture of the extermination of the Jews throughout the former Soviet Union. The collection also contains personal documents including memoirs, diaries, and testimonies of private people. The collection, as well as the albums of photographs taken in concentration camps, lists of Nazi criminals, etc., was recopied in order to complete what was missing, improve the quality and add other types of materials that were not acquired previously. The renewed and complete record group can be found in the Yad Vashem Microfilm Series.