Documents recently discovered in the city of Kaluga's archive reveal that the Nazis failed to liquidate the Jewish ghetto in this city 150 miles south of Moscow. In October 1941, the Germans were unable to carry out their plans to kill Kaluga's 154 remaining Jews because they had to flee the advancing Red Army. A Russian historian, Anna Simonova, is the Moscow coordinator of a leading Russian-American archival project. A group of researchers, headed by U.S.-based historian David Fishman and financed by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, is studying Jewish documents in what is called the Osoby, or Special, Archive, made up of papers looted by the Nazis and seized by the Soviets in 1945. The collection also contains personal archives of a number of outstanding Jewish personalities.
Some documents also contain information on Jewish property that later was destroyed or looted.
Parts of the collection relating to France, Belgium and Liechtenstein recently were returned to those countries. Some of the documents could provide material for suspense stories. Last year, a sensational Internet ad offered to sell diaries of Hitler deputy Martin Bormann that had been stolen from the archive. Copyright 2001, Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.