RUSSIA

KATYN FOREST
(Smolensk. 1939/40)

In 1939, during the Russian invasion of Poland, some 14,500 Polish officers were captured and interned in three POW camps in the Soviet Union. The next time the world heard of these prisoners was a news broadcast on April 13, 1943, from Radio Berlin. It stated that the German Army had discovered mass graves at Katyn,18 kilometres north-west of Smolensk, near the village of Gneizdovo and containing the bodies of Polish officers. Eight graves were opened and 4,253 bodies exhumed. All were dressed in Polish uniforms, with badges of rank and medals intact. No watches or rings were found on the corpses. It was established that the bodies were of Polish officers from the camp at Kozielsk, situated in the grounds of a former Monastery, near Orel. Two other camps, at Starobielsk (3,910 men) and at Ostashkov (6,500 men) were wound up and closed in the first days of April, 1940. Whatever happened to these 10,000 odd officers has never been established. They were never seen alive again. From evidence obtained after the war, all prisoners of Kozielsk camp were shot by Stalin's NKVD. On April 13, 1990, fifty years after the massacre, the USSR for the first time admitted its responsibility for the murders. The whole controversy was finally laid to rest when Boris Yeltsin, handed over the secret files on Katyn to the Polish president, Lech Walesa, on October 14, 1992. In May 1992, in a wood near Kharkov, a Russian private investigation team discovered a mass grave containing 3,891 bodies of Polish officers from the camp at Starobielsk in the Ukraine. In June of that year, Soviet authorities discovered 30 mass graves at Miednoje, one hundred miles north-west of Moscow. They contained the remains of 6,287 Polish prisoners from the Ostashkov island camp on Lake Seliguer. Before the massacre, 245 officers from Kozielsk, 79 from Starobielsk and 124 from the camp at Ostashkor , were transferred, for no apparent reason, to a camp at Pavlishchev Bor, a hundred miles north-west of the Kozielsk camp. These 448 officers proved to be the only survivors of the Katyn  massacre. In other parts of the Katyn Forest, other graves were discovered containing the bodies of Russian political prisoners who were executed in pre-war days by the NKVD. It seems that the Katyn Forest was the main execution site for Stalin’s secret police. (Not to be confused with the Khatyn murder site near Minsk).

MURDER AT BRONIKI, UKRAINE

On July 1st 1941, around 180 German soldiers of the 2nd and 6th Infantry Regiments and the 5th Artillery Regiment were taken prisoner by the Red Army in the town of Broniki. Most were suffering from battle wounds. Next day, the 2nd of July, advancing Wehrmacht troops discovered 153 bodies in a clover field near the town. All had been brutally murdered. According to the twelve survivors of the massacre, they were taken to the field just off the main road and forced to undress. All valuables such as money, rings, watches as well as their uniforms, shirts and shoes were stolen. Standing there naked, the prisoners were then fired upon by machine guns and automatic rifles. A few managed to escape by fleeing to the nearby woods. Similar reports from other regiments gave rise to the suspicion that the Soviets, in the early stages of the war, were not taking any prisoners. There was a division order, according to which every Russian soldier who shoots twenty German soldiers, received a three day leave pass to go home. He also was decorated and raised in rank.

THE PRISON MASSACRES
(June 22-29, 1941)

During the week of 22/29 June, 1941, thousands of Ukrainian and Polish political prisoners were murdered in their cells by the Soviet NKVD (KGB). Soon after the German attack on the Soviet Union, the retreating Soviets had no time to care for their prisoners locked up in prisons in the Ukraine, so they were simply killed. In some cities the whole prison was set on fire and the helpless prisoners burned to death. In Lutsk, 2,800 out of the 4000 inmates in prison, were murdered. When the German 49th Army Corps occupied the Polish-Ukrainian city of Lvov, now Limberg, around 2,400 dead bodies were found by German troops in the NKVD prison. Some were killed by hand-grenades thrown into their cells, most were killed by a shot in the neck. In the cellars of the Brygidky prison, 423 bodies were recovered. Hundreds more were piled up in the courtyard. In the military prison at Samarstinov, which had been set on fire, 460 charred bodies were found, many showing signs of brutal torture. In the cellars, bodies were piled up layer upon layer almost to the ceiling. Owing to the stench of the decomposing corpses, the German commander of Lvov ordered all doors to the cellars bricked up after the bodies were covered with lime. Altogether, in the Ukraine, around 10,000 Ukrainian and Polish political prisoners were killed in their prisons. It is a sad fact that many members of the NKVD execution squads in the Ukraine, were Jewish collaborators. (A memorial plaque at the former headquarters of the NKVD/KGB in Simferpol, Ukraine, is engraved with the names of thirty NKVD agents who gave their lives in the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet name for World War 11). The amazing thing is that all thirty names are Jewish! About half a million Jews served in the Red Army and approximately 200,000 were killed. A total of 160,000 Jewish soldiers were decorated with Soviet awards, 145 receiving the highest Soviet award, 'Hero of the Soviet Union'. Two Jewish women were also awarded this honour. Many Soviet soldiers, after capture, joined the Waffen SS. The 30th SS Division was composed of such troops.

THE HORROR OF VINNITSA

Shortly after the occupation of the town of Vinnitsa in July, 1941, the German troops discovered a mass grave in the courtyard of the town's prison. The grave, twenty metres long by six metres wide, contained the bodies of 96 Ukrainian political prisoners. They were killed when it was found impossible to evacuate them prior to the arrival of the German troops. Behind the prison, in another courtyard, a second mass grave was found but the bodies were not exhumed. However, persistent rumours among the civilian population of Vinnitsa resulted in the discovery of more graves at three different locations. In a pear orchard, 2kms outside the town, 38 mass graves were found, in the old cemetery 40 graves were discovered and in the People's Park another 35. Digging began on May 25, 1943 and it was soon established that the victims had died some five years before. The digging was interrupted some time later by adverse weather conditions. It was never resumed because the Red Army reoccupied the area soon after. By the time the Soviets entered the town, a total of 9,439 corpses had already been counted. All had a bullet wound in the neck. Ukrainian witnesses testified that since 1938 until the arrival of the German troops in 1941, trucks kept coming and going day and night bringing dead bodies to the burial ground from the NKVD prisons in the area.  Most of the victims were farmers and field workers (Kulaks) who were classed as 'enemies of the people' and who had resisted Stalin's collectivisation policies.

THE BALTIC EXECUTIONS

Within two weeks of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on August 1, 1940, almost the entire intelligentsia of these countries had been liquidated. The German attack on these provinces forced the withdrawal of the Soviet troops and paved the way for Hitler's Einsatzgruppen to start their roundup of all resident Jews. About 3,000 had already fled with the retreating Red Army but the 57,000 left behind in Vilna, faced a terrifying future. Einsatzgruppen 'A' operated in the Baltic Provinces under the command of SS Major General Stahlecker who, after five months, reported to Himmler (Document 2273-PS) that 229,052 Jews had been shot. Thousands more were housed in ghettos as they were urgently needed for slave labour. In Duenaburg, on November 9, 1941, 11,034 Jews were executed. At Libau, two weeks later, another 2,350 fell victim to SS bullets. In Lithuania, under the Nazi's, 136,421 Jews were put to death in numerous single actions by Lithuanian mercenaries with the help of the German police squads. In this total were 55,556 women and 34,464 children all shot to death in a deep moat surrounding the 19th century Tsarist Ninth Fort outside Kovno. In the White Russian Settlement Area, around 41,000 executions had taken place. In Vilna, around 32,000 Jews were murdered during the first six months of German occupation. When Vilna was liberated by the Red Army on July 13, 1944, a few hundred Jews who had been hiding in the surrounding forests, suddenly appeared in the city square. Altogether, between three and four thousand Jews out of the original 57, 000, survived in the concentration camps in Germany.

THE PONARY EXECUTIONS

From July, 1941 to July 1944, between 70,000 and 100,000 people were executed in a mass extermination site at Ponary, near Vilna in Lithuania. Most of the victims were the Jews from Vilna. The site, in a wooded area some ten kilometres from the city, was intended to be a fuel storage depot. Huge pits were dug by the Russians for the fuel tanks but the Red Army had to pull out before the project was completed. When the Nazis occupied Vilna on June 24, 1941, these pits at Ponary were used for the massacre of most of the 57.000 Jews of Vilna and thousands of Soviet prisoners of war. The victims were brought to the murder site on foot and by truck and then shot to death by the SS who were assisted by Lithuanian collaborators. The pits were then covered by a layer of soil. Late in 1943, the SS began opening the mass graves and burning the bodies in an effort to destroy the evidence of their crime from the approaching Red Army. This task was forced on about eighty Jewish prisoners who were later executed.

MASSACRES IN LITHUANIA

(August 28, 1941)   On this day SS units murdered 710 Jewish men, 767 Jewish women and 599 Jewish children. The day after, SS General Franz Jaecleln reported the execution of 23,600 Hungarian Jews who had been deported from Hungary. The slaughter took three days and took place at Kamenets Podolsk about 200 miles behind the German front line. At Minsk, an SS Cavalry Brigade put to death a total of 7,819 men, women and children in the ravine at Ratomskaya. Encoded reports of these massacres were transmitted to Berlin by Enigma machines. These signals were intercepted and deciphered at Bletchley Park and were read by the Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He warned the world of these executions but could not reveal the source. The protection of Enigma was paramount.

ATROCITY AT FEODOSIA
( Dec. 29, 1941 )

On the shores of the Black Sea, on the Crimean Peninsula, stands the port city of Feodosia. On the 3rd of November the city was captured by the German 46th and 170th Infantry Divisions. As the attack on Sevastopol was about to take place, most of the German forces were withdrawn to concentrate on the forthcoming battle. Left behind in the city were a small detachment of troops and all the wounded soldiers convalescing in the city's hospitals. On the afternoon of December 29, the city was bombarded by the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and a landing was made by Soviet marines followed by infantry. On the 18th of January, 1942, after their failure to capture Sevastopol, the German Wehrmacht was able to return an recapture Feodosia. They found that most of  the German military personnel had been murdered. Wounded soldiers had been thrown out of the windows of the hospital to make room for Russian wounded. Water was then poured on the near dead bodies and then left to freeze. On the beach, piles of bodies were found where they were thrown from a wall several metres high after being beaten and mutilated, their bodies left in the surf so that the sea water froze and covered them with a sheet of ice. There were some twelve survivors who had hidden in cellars when the Russian troops arrived. Their testimony before a German court of inquiry confirmed that  some 160 wounded soldiers were liquidated this way.

THE UKRANIAN MASSACRES
( Sept. 2, 1942 )

Due to partisan activity around the village Kortelisy , in the Ukraine, its entire population of 2,892 men, women and children were put to death by SS and SD execution squads helped by local pro-German Ukrainian police. The village was then razed and burned to the ground, the fires of which blazed for four days. All over Ukraine around 459 villages were destroyed with all or part of their population massacred. In the Volhynia province 97 villages suffered the same fate and in the Zhitomir province 32 villages were destroyed. There were at least 27 villages, in which every man, woman and child was killed and their houses completely destroyed. Most of the SS and SD units operating in the Ukraine consisted of locally recruited pro-German Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Estonians and White Russians. In all of central Russia there were only two regiments of German security police. The village of Bajki, in Belarus, whose inhabitants had originally welcomed the German troops as liberators from communist oppression, was burned to the ground when the Nazis retreated on January 22, 1944.  Of the 1,011 inhabitants of the village, 987 were shot and the 120 houses of the village set on fire.

CHARTSYSK MASSACRE
( Sept. 18, 1941 )

During the Soviet army retreat in the direction of Yeletsk, the retreating soldiers came upon a small ravine between Chartsysk and Snizhy stations about sixty kilometres from the city of Stalino. The horrible sight that befell their eyes was the dead bodies of many children aged from 14 to 16 years that partly filled the ravine. They were dressed in the black uniform of the F.S.U. Trade and Craft School in Staline. It was discovered that the children were being evacuated from as the German army neared the city. After walking nearly 60 kilometres they became utterly exhausted and had begged for transport. Their guardians promised to send trucks but instead a detachment of Russian political police (NKVD) arrived. Carrying machine-guns, they starting shooting the children in cold blood and throwing the bodies into the ravine. The Soviet soldiers counted the bodies of 370 slain children.

BABI YAR
( Sept. 29/30, 1941 )

A picturesque ravine situated in the Syrets suburb of the city of Kiev. It was about three kilometres long, over fifty metres deep and separated from the residential area by the local cemetery and a civilian prison. There, on September 29, the SS (Einsatzgruppe C, with the help of the Ukrainian police) herded the whole Jewish population of Kiev and the surrounding area, into the ravine and systematically began to slaughter the entire 33,771 souls. They were individually executed with a bullet in the neck. The killings took more than two days, the bodies then burned in pyres, each containing around 2,000 corpses. Later the SS brought in excavators and bulldozers and the ravine was filled in. In early October, Moscow informed the outside world of the discovery of the mass grave. The West, mistrustful of the Russians, dismissed the news as 'products of the Slavic imagination'. During the 778 days of the German occupation of Kiev, many thousands of Russian POWs, Ukrainians and other nationalities, were killed at Babi Yar . Of a total population of around 900,000, only 180,000 were living in Kiev at the end of the German occupation. In 1976, a 15 metre high memorial was unveiled on the site to commemorate the Russian POWs who were killed there. However, no reference is made to the Jews or number of Jewish dead.

THE KORSUN SLAUGHTER
( USSR February 16/17, 1944 )

During a violent blizzard on the night of Feb.16, five divisions of General Hube's 8th Army, (54,000 men) including the 5th SS Division 'Viking' and the Belgian Volunteer Brigade ' Wallonie ', made a last desperate bid to break out of the Russian encirclement around the towns of Korsun and Shandrerovka in the lower Dnieper south-west of Kiev. At 4am, elements of the 8th Army formed up in two columns of around 14,000 men each and flocked into two parallel ravines in the surrounding countryside, and where the two ravines met, the troops then emerged into open country and headed out towards Lysyanka. There, disaster struck as troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, under General Konev, were waiting. Soon after 6am, the slaughter began. Soviet tanks drove into the German columns crushing hundreds under their tracks. Fleeing in panic, the troops were then confronted by units of Cossack cavalry who started hacking them to pieces with their sabres, hands were lopped off of those who approached with their arms raised in surrender. There was no time to take prisoners and the carnage continued till it was all over. In the short space of three hours, over 20,000 German soldiers lay dead. Another 8,000, who had fled the scene, were rounded up during the next few days and taken prisoner.

NIKOLAEV MASSACRE

During the month of September, 1941, Action Group A, consisting of around eight hundred men, and commanded by SS General Otto Ohlendorf, was operating on the Russian southern front. In the period, 16th to 30th September, in the area around Nikolaev, and including the town of Cherson , they rounded up and massacred 35,782 Soviet citizens, mostly Jews. This was the figure reported to Hitler from the SD office, dated October 2, 1942.

RUSSIAN P.O.W. MASSACRES

Second only to the extermination of the Jews, the massacre of Russian prisoners of war must rank as the greatest of tragedies of World War 11. During the first seven months of the Russian campaign, over three million Soviet soldiers were captured. By February, 1942, only 1,020,531 were still alive. Some two million had died of starvation and cold during their forced march to the rear (up to 400 kilometers). Out in the open, day and night, they fell by the wayside in their thousands. When finally they reached their POW enclosures and given their first real meal, they 'simply collapsed and lay dead on the floor'. Starved to death in their POW cages, they died in the open, having eaten the last blade of grass. Many were reduced to a state of cannibalism after begging for a scrap of food or a cigarette. In one camp a German guard was killed and eaten and a dead dog, thrown over the wire fence was pounced upon and torn to shreds with their bare hands, so desperate were the prisoners for food. Thousands were tortured and then shot in concentration camps, or, as slave labourers, worked till they dropped in quarries and in factories. Of the 9,000 prisoners sent to the Buchenwald camp only 800 were alive when US troops liberated the camp in 1945. In the notorious Dachau camp, of the 10,000 Russian POWs who arrived there in 1941, only 150 were alive by mid-1942. By 1944, it is estimated that around 3,299,000 Russian prisoners of war were disposed of in this way. At the end of May, 1944, there were a total of 5,160,000 Soviet soldiers in German custody. Of these, only 1,053,000 survived the war.

Click here for atrocities in Poland and Czechoslovakia

Source: http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres.html