Evening star., 1943-03-03
Bv DAVID NJ. NICHOL,
Foreisn Correspondent of The Star and
Chicaeo Daily News

Chca2o Daily News
KHARKOV, Feb 25 Delayed -
At 5 o'clock one afternoon the Nazis
set off heavy charges of explosives
in Kharkov's vast railroad station
and fired the tumbling ruins.
Twelve hours later they brought
crashing down across the tracks and
platforms the concrete and steel
oyerpass, where it lies and will lie
tor some time like a tangled dam
across these important lines.
The Nazis had failed to make
Kfarkov the great outpost they had
planned for their new order empire
They had failed even to hold the
city as military bastion against
the advancing Red Army. Now they
were putting it to the torch and
dynamite.
All through the night and the
day before the fires burned. The
Soviet tanks and infantrymen were
hammering in from the east, A
Red Army major had fallen in the
grounds of the roof1ess, blackened
medical institute where he was later
buried with wooden headstone and
a tragic little funeral bouquet which
the citizens somewhere had managed
to find atop the litter of modern
war filling the city's snow banked
streets.
Stores and Offices Afire.
At the lower end of Sumskaya
street, Kharkovs principal north
south thoroughfare, stores and sew
eral large apartment and office
buildings were afire, Around the
corner in "Paul's Platz," whose bi-
lihgual German and Ukrainian signs
read astonishingly like "Paulus
Platz,' at first glance. there had been
bitter fighting, Marshal Friedrich
Won Paulus, captured by the Rus
SLAMS. was head of the 9Th German
Army defeated at Stalingradl
Two tanks, their gun turrets
swung at crazv angles. had been
DESTROYED near a primitive last-war
model that now serves as a monu-
naent.
Farther north, in SumSkaya
Square. the colonnaded palace of
pioneers, dedicated to the children S
organization which is directed by
the Communist party, had collapsed
In flames, except for its facade
Eight days later. when a party of
American and British correspond
ents first saw it, Wisps of gray-b blue
smoke still curled upward from its
jumbled interior. Across the street,
the Scorched stone walls were all
that remained of the once comfort
able Hotel Krassnaya Colossus had
tumbled from a cornice into the
street.
At the northern end of Sumskaya
street is huge Dzerzhinsky Square,
pride of Kharkov's extensive build
ing in the years since the revolution.
Here. on the low height between the
Kharkov and Lopan Rivers, were the
International Hotel, the Graystone
Obcom, or regional party center, IA
story house projects where as many
as 1000 technicians and experts
were employed in more peaceful
times, the huge House Industry and
the Red Brick House Corporation.
16 Months of Terror.
Each was somehow connected with
the savage, vicious experience of
Kharkov during the almost Is
months of Nazi occupation. From
the Obcom balcony were hanged
those of Kharkovs people for whom
the Germans planned special dis
tinction. Others found places of
lesser prominence in almost any tree
or house.
The Gestapo was lodged in the
Hotel, the House Industry served as
a storage place, while, when we saw
1t, the red, white and black sentry
box still stood before the House of
Corporations which had been made
a barracks. All are now ruins.
Apartment buildings, factories and
shops which might have been slight
II eased the life of Kharkovs people.
all suffered similarly. Bridges sag
YEARLY into rivers. The treads of
overturned tanks already beginning
TO rust protrude from icy waters.
The catalogue of Karkov's wounds
and scars might be Indefinitely con-
tinued.
There was destruction when the
Nazis first occupied the city in Oc-
Iober, 194l. There was A 48-hour
inferno before the Germans left.
and then in one last savage effort
10 make unusable for the Soviet
Union what Hitler was unable 10
explnlt. himself ReichnarShal Her