Orel during the Great Patriotic War

Orel during the Great Patriotic War.

8. Occupation

From the first day of the war, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the Orel region was declared under martial law. On June 23, 1941, mobilization to the front began. Thousands of volunteers have applied to be sent to the front. On June 25, the first raid of enemy aircraft was made on Orel. On July 10, the evacuation of cultural and public education institutions began: orphanages, schools, institutes, as well as factories, collective farmers and farm animals to Penza, Saratov, Tambov and other eastern regions.

The occupation by the Nazi invaders is the most terrible page in the history of the Orel region. The occupiers have established a regime of violence, bloody terror and forced labor against the civilian population on the Orel land. During the occupation, for the slightest disobedience, resistance to robbery and violence, assistance to partisans, membership in the Communist Party and the Komsomol, belonging to Jewish nationality and simply for no reason, executions, beatings and torture followed.

During the occupation, 4243 civilians were brutally tortured and killed by the Nazi invaders. The occupiers spared neither the elderly nor the children. With special cruelty, the Nazis destroyed 8,111 Soviet prisoners of war. In German captivity, the Nazi invaders for hard labor stole 56,490 people.

During the war years in the Orel region in its pre-war borders, losses amounted to more than 620 thousand inhabitants. The cities of the Orel region lay in ruins and piles of ruins, many rural settlements were completely burned. Orel was among the 15 largest and oldest Russian cities most affected during the war.