A letter from Victor Ukraintsev, a hero of the 1945 uprising in the Mauthausen concentration camp, to Moscow science city – Railways Institute school 1138 Komsomol members (a historical source publication)

The authors publish a unique historical source, a letter from a Soviet officer Victor Ukraintsev to the students of Moscow school 1138. He participated in the uprising of the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945. The article also considers the context when the correspondence began, a special history of the emergence and development of the Soviet “garden-city” – Railways Institute led to the interest of schoolchildren in the Great Patriotic War heroes and their experience of preserving courage and loyalty to the Motherland in the most difficult circumstances, and to the creation of a school museum under the guidance of history teacher Tamara Shelenok (the former – Polyakova). The authors prepared a historical note about the uprising and Victor Ukraintsev's escape, about the reflection of these events in the Soviet literature of the 1960s and about the Moscow science city – Railways Institute, where the school was located, the students of which initiated the correspondence. The appendix contains photocopies of the letter and the accompanying picture of Victor Ukraintsev.