Kukryniksy: the Caricature "The Last Digit"

"The Last Digit" is the original of a caricature drawn in ink by the Kukryniksy for the newspaper Pravda. Above the Nazi leaders huddled behind a wooden barrier, the figures "194" are written large, and the last digit, the six, is formed by a rope noose. One of the defendants throws back his head in horror, another raises his hand, a third has dropped his head onto the barrier.

The drawing was made in 1945 in Nuremberg, where the trial of the major Nazi war criminals opened on 20 November 1945. The Kukryniksy, Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiry Krylov and Nikolai Sokolov, worked at the trial and sketched the defendants. Pravda published the caricature on 1 January 1946 together with verses by Samuil Marshak, in which Göring, Ribbentrop, Frank, Hess and Rosenberg await trial in the Nuremberg prison in fear of the verdict, and the digit of the new year reminds them of a noose.

The trial lasted until 1 October 1946, and 12 defendants were sentenced to death. The sheet is drawn in ink on paper and measures 360 × 480 mm.