Three old books that Russians took from the temporarily occupied territories have been found

According to information by War sanctions, the main portal about sponsors and supporters of the aggression, Russians have illegally exported three antiquarian prints from the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, the oldest of which dates back to the late 19th century.

Among the old prints stolen by the occupiers is a Torah dating  back to the late 19th to early 20th century. It was stolen from the Art Museum of Kuindzhi in Mariupol (it had been dedicated to Arkhyp Kuindzhi, a native of Mariupol and a world-famous Ukrainian realist artist, landscape painter, and teacher).

The museum opened its doors to visitors on Oct. 29, 2010, and its collection included 2,200 paintings, graphics, sculpture, and pieces of decorative and applied art. Before the museum was destroyed by a Russian aerial bomb on March 21, 2022, all exhibits were spirited away to an unknown destination.

A Greek Gospel from 1811 was stolen from the museum around the same time. The last known location of the books is the Donetsk Local History Museum in the temporarily occupied Donetsk. In 2022, during the occupation of Kherson, Russians stole another Gospel, dated 1785, which was taken from the Kherson Local History Museum.

The Holy Spirit Cathedral in Kherson presented this book to the museum in 1963. Until then, it had been kept in the Catherine Cathedral. The Gospel has 493 pages and is illustrated with engravings. On the first page, there is a handwritten ink inscription: “Zaporizhzhia Sich to the Catherine Cathedral.”

The Kherson Local History Museum was founded in 1890, and before the full-scale invasion had one of the largest collections of antique art pieces and items in southern Ukraine. The museum consisted of four departments: the Museum of Local History, the Literary Museum, the Museum of Nature, and the Museum of the History of Kakhovka. The Literary Museum housed rare antique books and publications.

The museum’s collections contained more than 180,000 items, over 10,000 of which were on display. The Russian occupiers not only took away the exhibits shared with the public, they also looted the museum’s collection funds.

As reported earlier, Ukrainian cultural figures, public organizations, and representatives of expert circles are demanding the immediate evacuation of  items of cultural importance from threatened regions across Ukraine.

RELATED: Poland is preparing to evacuate museum collections in case of an attack by Russia

Copy editing: Ben Angel