Memphis, Tenn. (special) -- During World War II, approximately 680,000 Americans were killed, almost all of them members of the military. The Soviet Union during the same conflict lost more than 27 million people, more than 20 million of them civilians. Much of the war was fought on Russian soil.

An exhibition, World War II through Russian Eyes, now being shown at the Pyramid here in Memphis,  will open March 13 in San Diego's Balboa Park's Municipal Gymnasium and Exhibit Hall, which will be dramatically remodeled by Broadway award winning designer Alexander Okun for the occasion. With over 500 artifacts from the Central Armed Forces Museum of Moscow on display, the exhibition is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors before its July 4 closing.

From 4 a.m., June 22, 1941, when the Germans launched a million-soldier offensive called "Operation Barbarossa" across the stretch of Russia's European border to May 8, 1945, when the Allies declared "Victory in Europe Day," the exhibition documents the Russian people's incredible stories of suffering and bravery in the bloodiest war known to humankind. 

While universal in appeal, the exhibition is particularly poignant for the Jewish community. There is some never-before-seen movie footage of the nazis herding Jews to be machine gunned alongside the ravine at Babi Yar, near Kiev, Ukraine. In two days of horror, 34,000 Jews were murdered, and atop their bodies the Germans methodically added more and more murder victims--more Jews, Gypsies and Soviet war prisoners--eventually filling the ravine with the corpses of 100,000 people.

There also is the paraphernalia of the defeated nazi empire, including the uniform Hitler wore when he committed suicide in his bunker; keepsakes from his desk; his boots; the personal standard and flag which usually preceded him during parades, and the giant bronze eagle which once sat above the Reich Chancellery, Hitler's seat of government, and was pulled down from the building by victorious Russian troops.

The Florida-based Historical Achievements Museum, which contracted with the Russians to show the artifacts throughout the United States, retained Mark Talisman, founding vice chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, and a veteran of such well-remembered traveling exhibitions as  "The Precious Legacy" and "Daniel's Story" to assemble the exhibition.

Sensitive that all those nazi artifacts--particularly those connected directly to Hitler--could seem a form of homage to the nazis unless exhibited in an appropriate way, Talisman made certain that "everything is surpressed visually.

"The uniform is on the ground; the bunker is scattered after he killed himself, and the point is that Hitler died doing this, not that there is a shrine that he lived," Talisman told HERITAGE. A variety of nazi flags and banners, which were thrown to the ground by Red Army soldiers during a great May 9, 1945, victory parade at Red Square, similarly are exhibited on the floor, with a large photo blowup of the parade behind them, so that no honor is rendered to the nazi emblems. During the exhibit's showings in Washington D.C. and Memphis, Tenn., organizers of "World

OBJECTS FROM HITLER'S BUNKER including he uniform in which he committed suicide are displayed in the exhibit World  War II Through Russian Eyes.

War II Through Russian Eyes" issued special invitations in those cities to Holocaust Survivors and Russian Jewish emigres to take VIP tours.

"They all understood it and wanted their picture taken next to the bronze eagle which was pulled down from the Reich Chancellery," Talisman said. "I asked the first guy 'why do you want this picture?' and he replied, 'Because I am alive, and it is dead!' And that's the point."

Nevertheless, Talisman did find some material in the archives of the Central Armed Forces Museum of Moscow that he simply refused to exhibit, among them a fragment of Hitler's skull. Talisman and Douglas Marcille, president of the sponsoring Historical Achievements Museum, reported to HERITAGE  that they actually held the skull fragement in their hands--and believe that the Russians soon will permit an American television magazine show, perhaps 60 Minutes, to have it authenticated as Hitler's through DNA tests. For years, rumors persisted that Hitler somehow had survived the war.

REICH CHANCELLERY EAGLE captured by Russian troops in April of 1945 when Berlin fell.

Marcille, a Gentile married to a Jewish woman, said holding the skull fragment was momentous enough for him, but that for Talisman, who is Jewish, it was even more emotional. Imagine holding in their hands proof that the man who had caused so many murders and so much destruction was dead!

At the end of the war, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin "was absolutely convinced that Hitler was alive; he was paranoid that Hitler was alive, and he said, 'I want to see his skull, his jawbones, uniform; whatever you can bring and I want it tested to make sure that it is Hitler,'" Talisman said. "So there are six autopsy reports." The material subsequently disappeared into the vaults of the Soviet Union, not to reappear until after the end of the Cold War.

The autopsy reports--including interviews of people who were in the bunker--revealed that Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun took poison, and that Hitler arranged for himself to be shot in the head after the poison produced unconsciousness.

Although the exhibition also includes some of Stalin's personal effects, like his great coat and revolver, as well as other compelling war exhibitry such as Russian planes, a two-seater German motorcycle, small arms, the few possessions members of Partisan units kept at their side, and patriotic banners exhorting the Russian populace to fight on, it is the Hitler material that inexorably draws the visitor--perhaps as a moth to a flame.

"One of the reasons for this is the huge damage that one person could do," Talisman explained. "To mobilize a nation of the highest educational and philosophical and religious standards and turn them around into a marauding horde that killed the largest number of people in the history of humankind--and he was the leader of it all."

 * * *

As transfixing as the Hitler memorabilia may be, it does a disservice to the memory of 27 million Russians to focus only on that aspect of the exhibition. Between the implementation of the Barbarossa plan and the destruction of Hitler's bunker in Berlin were some of the most epic battles fought on the face of this globe -- battles that we in the United States have known relatively little about because of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War that immediately followed World War II.

 If asked to name the World War II saga most associated with Dmitri Shastikovitch's Seventh Symphony and with such terms as "ice children" and "sweet dirt," how many Americans would be able to name the nearly 900-day Siege of Leningrad in which about  800,000 people died of starvation? 

This portion of the exhibition tells how the composer wrote and premiered the emotional piece of music as a way to bring some comfort to his countrymen trapped with him in Leningrad.A video shows a few moments of the actual performance, with Shastikovitch playing the piano, and the chairs of some of the other musicians empty because they had either been wounded or killed. The scene includes the a copy of the Time Magazine which honored Shastikovitch for his spirit.

Nearby is a re-creation of a small Leningrad apartment as it looked early in the siege--when there still was some wood furniture left to burn for heat. Talisman said when World War II Through Russian Eyes was ensconsed in the Ronald Reagan Office Building in Washington D.C., "I had two ladies from Georgetown who were about as Alice Roosevelt (blue-blooded) as possible, living in a huge mansion left by their railroad baron father. 

"They are standing in front of this recreated Leningrad apartment where not only is furniture being used for firewood but wallpaper is being stripped off the walls so residents could soak it, cook the paste, and drink it. So these two ladies--one 90, the other 89--are in each other's arms crying hysterically," Talisman continued. 

"I walk up and say 'what happened? How can I help you?' and they say, 'oh, we just got to this point and we realize how badly we acted during the war when we were only worried about whether we had enough nylons and sugar.'"

Another day, "two Jewish women from Leningrad who went through the siege looked at the apartment and cried 'this is our apartment! It is exactly the way our apartment looked!'" Later they said, the re-creation "did us the greatest favor you can imagine. We have lived in Silver Springs since after the war and we have been treated like dotty old ladies in our neighborhood bitching and moaning about what a terrible life we had in Leningrad. People said, 'nobody could have lived that life--will you stop making up those stories?' and now our neighborhood association sponsored a trip down here and everyone is apologizing and they are holding a dinner to honor us.'"

"It is amazing," Talisman added. "That is what true history does. That is what happens when you tell the truth."

Because Leningrad's water system was destroyed, children went to the river and brought up water in buckets. In winter, thousands of  "ice children" dug up ice from the river to bring home to their family. Black market food soared to unbelievable prices. Two weeks' salary were required to buy a loaf of bread. A stray dog or cat cost a full month's pay. And, according to a narration prepared for the exhibit, "people would go to the ruins of a food warehouse and try to suck sugar from the soil. We called it 'sweet dirt'"

Next a visitor goes to a section about the partisans, geurrilla groups created by citizens whose homes and families were destroyed by war--many of them orphaned children. The partisans' specialty was sabotage, destroying German installations, communications, and railroad supply routes. "There were over one million partisans and many Jews were partisans," Talisman said. "Stalin did not like to admit the Jewish aspect. In fact, he belittled the Jews for being cowards. 

One of my objectives was to correct that history." Helping to keep up the spirits of partisans and other Soviet citizens were propaganda posters, attached by the Russian government to nearly every wall, as well as satirical puppet shows in which caricatures of Hitler and his propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, helped to deflate the nazi "superman" image. Satirical puppets of Hitler and Goebbels from this era are included in this section of the exhibition. In the fall of 1941, Hitler ordered 74 divisions to converge on Moscow, hoping to take the Russian capital. The Russians put up defensive fortifications that stretched from the heart of the city to 60 miles beyond the perimeter.

Satiric Puppets of Hitler and Goebbels

The Germans advanced to within 20 miles of the city, losing two-thirds of their tanks and nearly a quarter million men. And then the snow set in, freezing them in their tracks. By December, Germany had to abandon its attack on Moscow. In this section of the exhibition we see an impression of Stalin's office in the Kremlin -- a good segui to the next exhibit about the100-day battle fought in the summer of 1942 over the city named for the dictator: Stalingrad.

A Russian voice on an audiotape informs visitors that "Stalingrad was a hell of urban warfare. ...Battles moved door to door. Some buildings were taken and retaken many times in the course of a few days. Groups of Russian fighters established strongholds in the individual factories and buildings. One legendary squad held a central Stalingrad apartment building for months, playing a single victrola record they had found there over and over, taunting the Germans who could not overrun them."

As the battle continued, exhausting both sides, the Red Army circled the city and cut off the nazi troops' supply lines. Then the Red Army counterattacked, forcing the surrender of the German forces on Jan. 31, 1943. It was the Russians' first total victory, but the real turning point of the war on the Russian front still was to come -- in a monumental tank battle at Kursk, which the Germans attacked in July of 1943.

With 1.3 million men, the Russian defenders outnumbered the German attackers by half. And they had mass produced T-34 tanks with 85 mm guns that could cripple the German panzers with a single shot. According to the audio narrative prepared by the Memphis International Cultural Series and Acoustiguide Corp: "2,600 German tanks attempted to break through lines south of Kursk. There they were met by 600 Soviet tanks, primarily T-34s in the fiercest tank battle in history. For eight hours the air filled with dust and smoke. The earth was strewn with burning tanks and exploding land mines. Tanks fought so close together they often collided. When night fell, the Germans had been stopped in their tracks."

Meanwhile, British and American forces were landing in Italy, opening up a new European front against the Axis Powers. Hitler decided to pull back his forces from Russia, and once the nazis were on the run, they stayed on the run--all the way back to Berlin.

The exhibition takes visitors next to the emotional moment at the Elbe River where Allied forces advancing from the West on Germany met Russian forces advancing from the East. 

Elsewhere we see a Russian plane--a PO-2, a 1920's style biplane of plywood, without radio or any guns, that could fly no faster than 94 miles per hour. Such planes were piloted, crewed and maintained by an all-women's crew whose tactics were so fearsome that the terrorized nazis called them the "night witches."

The daring ladies would come over their targets at night and by hand throw bombs down on the German troops. With a hook that dangled behind their planes, they tore down telephone wires to disrupt communications. Eventually, the Germans began to recognize the sound of the planes' small engines, and shot down a few. So the women-- flying in packs of five or six -- would shut down their engines and glide over the target to wreak their devestation. Then they would restart their engines and head back home.

In this section too is a Bell Airacobra built in America and sent to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act. Near it is a portrait of the Soviet fighter ace Alexander Pokryshkin who, according to the exhibition's notes, "shot down 59 German aircraft and became the first person to be awarded as the 'Hero of the Soviet Union' three times.

"Every mission Pokryshkin flew depicted his courage and pilot mastery. Usually outnumbered, Pokryshkin always achieved victory and returned to his base with his aircraft. The best example of his courage and skill is when five Soviet aircraft headed by Pokryshkin, engaged twelve German fighters; the Germans were forced to retreat after losing four planes, the Russians lost none."

The fall of Berlin is followed in the exhibition by the showing of a video detailing the Nuremberg trials. And then there is a final hallway in which the pictures and medals of former Soviet soldiers now living in the United States are shown. A similar exhibit, drawing on the memorabilia of veterans of the Soviet Union now living in San Diego, is planned for our area. Visitors will be able to go from the Municipal Gymnasium to the Veterans Memorial Center across Park Boulevard to hear some of those veterans' stories in person.

A 12-page tabloid newspaper published for World War II Through Russian Eyes provides a detailed accounting of the events that occurred on the Russian front, incorporating many never before seen photos shot by the Soviet Union's equivalent of the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

The special newspaper concludes with this summary: "For the Soviet peoples the conflict lasted 1,418 days and nights. Over 27 million people died in this war. The Soviet economy was devestated. The German forces burned 1,710 cities and towns completely or partially. More than 70,000 villages, six million buildings and houses and around 25 million people were left without housing. Around 32,000 large and medium factories were destroyed. Over 65,000 kilometers of railroad tracks were put out of commission. Over 98,000 collective farms, 1,878 state farms, 2,890 agriculture equipment parks were also destroyed."

We Jews have a custom at our weddings of breaking a glass to remember the destruction of our Holy Temple by the Romans in the Year 70 CE. So devestating was World War II to the Soviet Union, Talisman notes, that "today brides and grooms before they get maried take their wedding flowers and place them at a war memorial. It has had a deep impact on every family even today."