Inglorious Basterds of the Great Patriotic War (17 photos). Russian collaborators and traitors during the Second World War
Some time ago, the Russian media disseminated a report that in Latvia, a former NKVD employee, and now a disabled person of group I, 83-year-old Mikhail Farbtukh, accused of genocide against the indigenous people of this country, was arrested and taken to prison. The Latvian judicial system did not take into account the fact that the pensioner could not move independently, and he had to be carried to the place of detention on a stretcher.
Few people remained indifferent when they learned about yet another manifestation of the “double morality” of the Riga authorities. But there was one person in Veliky Novgorod whom this information especially touched to the quick. Vasily MIKHEEV, a retired FSB colonel, for several decades headed the department investigating the acts of German punitive forces and their henchmen in the Novgorod region, and knew well that one of the most fierce detachments that shot more than 2,600 people near the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka, Batetsky district, was the team , consisting mainly of white emigrants and Latvians. Messrs. Klibus, Tsirulis, Janis and their other compatriots not only hunted for partisans, but also did not hesitate to kill Russian children. Moreover, they often spared the cartridges and simply stabbed them with bayonets...
Vasily Mikheev was sent to the state security agencies in 1950. A soldier who trampled half of Europe during the war did not need to be told about the atrocities and horrors of fascism, but what Vasily Petrovich had to face while serving in the KGB turned out to be much worse than what he saw at the front. Then everything was clear: there is an enemy in front of you, you must destroy him. And now he had to look for these enemies among completely respectable people, tearing off their masks and presenting mountains of children's and women's bones and skulls as accusations.
During the Great Patriotic War, the territory of the Novgorod region was literally filled with intelligence, counterintelligence, punitive and propaganda German agencies. There were several reasons for this, including the close front-line zone and the partisan movement. There were about a dozen Jagdkommandos and punitive battalions alone. Moreover, the main personnel in them were Russians, Balts and other representatives of our multinational state.
In fact, the operational search for German collaborators and war criminals began immediately after the formation of the Novgorod region - in 1944. But several thousand criminal cases were opened, so the work of exposing the executioners dragged on for a long time. Not all of them appeared in court. Many criminals managed to hide abroad, start their own businesses, and become influential people. And yet…
In 1965, one of the most high-profile cases was carried out, which had resonance throughout Europe. This was the case of Erwin Schüle, an Oberleutnant in Hitler's army, convicted in 1949 by a Soviet court and then expelled from the country. If only we knew then that soon our Ministry of Foreign Affairs will unsuccessfully seek the extradition of this criminal based on newly discovered facts of crimes in the Chudovsky district of the Novgorod region! But, alas...
The most interesting thing is that, despite the court's ruling, Schule managed to make a dizzying career in Germany: he was the head of the country's Central Department for the Investigation of... Nazi crimes, and all the prosecutors of West Germany were subordinate to him! And although the special services failed to get the German authorities to extradite the criminal, copies of the interrogation reports of witnesses, photographs and other materials nevertheless forced the German authorities to remove the executioner from the political arena.
Another murderer, already our compatriot, the former commander of the 667th punitive battalion “Shelon” Alexander Riess lived quite comfortably in the USA, where he died, undisturbed by anyone, in 1984. And during the war... The battalion and its commander proved themselves in many punitive operations, for which they received high praise from the fascist command as “a reliable and combat-ready formation that successfully solved the tasks assigned to it.” The document “Evaluation of Battalion 667, volunteer rangers,” which fell into the hands of the Soviet command, says: “Since the beginning of August 1942, the battalion has been continuously participating in battles. In winter, 60 percent of the combat personnel were put on skis and fighter teams were formed from them.”
One of the Sheloni operations, carried out on December 19, 1942, became one of the most brutal actions in the Novgorod region. On this day, punitive forces dealt with the population of the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok in the Poddorsky (then Belebelkovsky) district. First, the villages were shelled with mortars, and then a massive “cleansing” began, during which Riess and his men shot people at point-blank range and threw grenades at their houses. The survivors - about 100 old men, women and children - were driven onto the ice of the Polist River and shot... In total, 253 people died in these villages, and the responsibility for their death lay with Alexander Ivanovich (Iogannovich) Risse.
Residents of the destroyed villages were randomly buried in the spring of 1943 in common pits. Time has changed the area, a young forest has appeared. But still, during the exhumation 20 years later, four burials were discovered. And although the examination was carried out by strong, healthy men, many of them could not restrain their feelings when children’s heads appeared one after another from the clay mess (due to the peculiarities of the soil, the remains were poorly decomposed), luxurious girlish braids and toys. Apparently, the kids went to their death, hiding from bullets, some with a ball, and some with a teddy bear...
All materials from these crimes and evidence of Risse’s involvement in them were handed over to the American authorities. Representatives of the US Department of Justice already intended to arrive in Novgorod to verify the reliability of testimony about his atrocities. But... The US administration has changed, and for some reason it suddenly became unprofitable for it to extradite war criminals. And Riess remained free, and his children and grandchildren - now the Rysovs - are still alive and well: some in Italy, some in Crimea...
However, not all fighters of the “Shelon” detachment managed to get off so easily. Vasily Mikheev says:
“Although the criminals tried to stay away from their homes, did not maintain contact with relatives, and often changed their place of residence and surnames, we still managed to pick up their trail. Here, for example, is the titanic work of conspiracy carried out by Pavel Aleksashkin, a close associate of Alexander Riess. At one time, he received awards from the Germans and was even sent to Belarus for special services, where he commanded a punitive battalion. After the war, he was very quickly condemned for serving with the Germans (just that!). And after serving the minimum sentence, he settled in the Yaroslavl region.
But one day, while investigating episodes of the case of the murder of partisan Tatyana Markova and her friend by punitive forces, we needed Aleksashkin’s testimony. Imagine our surprise when, in response to our request, Yaroslavl colleagues reported that Aleksashkin was listed as... a participant in the Second World War, received all the awards and benefits granted to veterans, spoke at schools, talking about his “combat past”! I had to tell people about the true “exploits” of the veteran...
By the way, almost every second policeman or punisher passed himself off as war veterans. Pavel Testov, for example, had medals “For Victory over Germany” and “20 Years of Victory”. But in fact, in 1943, he took the oath of allegiance to Nazi Germany and served in the Jagdkommando. On November 26, 1943, this detachment carried out a punitive action against residents of the villages of Doskino, Tanina Gora and Torchilovo, Batetsky district, who were hiding from being hijacked to Germany in the Pandrino tract. There they were attacked by Testov and his comrades, armed to the teeth. They pushed people out of dugouts and shot them. And 19-year-old Sasha Karaseva and her sister Katya were torn apart alive, tied by their legs to bent trees. Then all the corpses were burned.
Another “honest citizen,” Mikhail Ivanov, a native of the village of Paulino, Starorussky district, who before the war worked as a guard at the Borovichi correctional colony, forced operatives to run after him through cities and villages for several decades. His biography was, in general, common for many German henchmen: he was drafted into the army, was surrounded, from where he went straight to his home as a police officer in the Utushinsky volost, then a punitive battalion and again executions, robberies, arrests, burning villages...
After that, he could no longer sit still and wait for them to come for him. Minsk region, Borovichi, Krustpils (Latvia), Leninabad, Chelyabinsk and Arkhangelsk regions, Kazakhstan - everywhere Ivanov left his mark. Moreover, he ran not alone, but with his partner and six children whom they managed to give birth to over the years of wandering. But the unlucky dad still had to leave his large family and go to places not so remote.
“I’ve been retired for quite a long time,” says Vasily Mikheev, “but many of my unfinished cases still haunt me. Today, war criminals are no longer wanted, and many of them have died. And without that, the intelligence services have enough worries. But crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations. And if now the country bows its head low to those who fell victims of political repression and clears their names of slander and shame, then the names of executioners and murderers should also be known to people. At least for the sake of those children who shielded themselves from bullets on the ice with teddy bears...
(Vladimir Maksimov, AiF)
Historical information:
Battalion "Shelon" of Abwehrgruppe No. 111.
Commander - Red Army Major Alexander Riess (pseudonyms: Romanov, Kharm, Hart / Hart).
Formed as an anti-partisan detachment.
In October 1942, transferred to the Wehrmacht as the 667th ROA battalion, and served as the basis for the formation of the 16th Jaeger Regiment of the 16th Army.
Reconnaissance detachment of department 1C 56 TK.
Commander - N. G. Chavchavadze. Reformed into the 567th reconnaissance squadron of the ROA of the 56th Tank Corps.
As part of the 1st Division of the ROA KONR since the end of 1944.
In 1945-47 he acted as part of the UPA, broke into Austria in 1947.
Russian combat detachment (battalion) AG-107.
Security company AG-107.
Composition: 90 people.
Commanders: Major of the Red Army Klyuchansky, Captain of the Red Army Shat, Senior Lieutenant of the Red Army Chernutsky.
Intelligence school AG-101.
Commanders - Captain Pillui, Captain of the Red Army Pismenny.
AG - 114 "Dromedary" - Armenian.
Commander - Major General "Dro" - Kananyan.
Courses AG-104.
Chief - Major of the Red Army Ozerov.
Formed at the end of 1941 by Red Army Major A.I. Riess as the Shelon battalion of Abwehrgruppe No. 111. Transferred to the Wehrmacht as the 667th Russian battalion.
Cossack battalion of Abwehrgruppe No. 218.
Oriental Ministry propagandist course in Woolheide.
The chief is Colonel Antonov (Chief of Staff of the KONR Internal Troops).
Russian combat detachment (battalion) AG No. 111, commander Major of the Red Army Alexander Riss. In 1942 - 667th ROA battalion of the Wehrmacht.
The official name of the unit is the Eastern Jaeger 667th Battalion “Shelon”. It was formed in February 1942 at the Dno station, in the upper reaches of Shelon. Consisted of six companies of one hundred people each. The battalion was commanded by former Red Army captain Alexander Riss. The prisoners of war and volunteers selected for service were distinguished by their fierce cruelty. The list of documented executions they carried out barely fit on eight typewritten pages. The mass execution of at least 253 residents of the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok on the ice of Polisti on December 19, 1942 stands out.
One of the first volunteers of the Shelon battalion was G. M. Gurvich. A Jew by nationality, Grigory Moiseevich Gurvich, changed his name to Grigory Matveevich Gurevich. He was particularly cruel: the investigation established his participation in the execution of at least 25 people.
The subjective side of betrayal is based on the personal characteristics of the collaborators. At various times, state security agencies tracked down and prosecuted more than 100 people for the aforementioned punitive battalion “Shelon”. They all had different pre-war fates, they all ended up in the battalion due to different circumstances. If we talk about the detachment commander, Alexander Ivanovich Risse, then based on the materials of the search case, a conclusion may arise about his resentment against the Soviet regime. A German by nationality and a Red Army officer, he was arrested in 1938 on suspicion of belonging to the German intelligence agencies, but was released from custody for lack of evidence in 1940. However, when a person at the beginning of the war is sent to the front, where he voluntarily goes over to the enemy’s side, and then methodically engages in executions and torture of exclusively civilians, is awarded two iron crosses, medals and rises to the rank of major, then a big question arises regarding such a kind of revenge against Stalin’s regime.
Or another punisher - Grigory Gurvich (aka Gurevich), a Jew by nationality, managed to pass himself off as a Ukrainian - according to eyewitnesses, he was so cruel and unpredictable that his actions caused fear even among his colleagues.
Among the punitive forces there were many Russians, even residents of the Sheloni deployment areas.
There are few Novgorodians left who remember the trial that took place in the building of the Novgorod Drama Theater in December 1947. At that time, there were nineteen soldiers of the Nazi army in the dock. At that trial, they also talked about the 667th punitive battalion “Shelon”, among whose leaders was a traitor to the Motherland, former captain of the Soviet Army Alexander Riss. Vasily Petrovich had to work a lot, looking for participants in atrocities from the battalion under his command.
667th punitive battalion "Shelon", operating in 1942 - 1943. in the southern Ilmen region, destroyed about 40 settlements. The punitive forces took a direct part in the execution of civilians in the villages of Bychkovo, Pochinok, Zahody, Petrovo, Nivki, Posoblyaevo, and Pustoshka.
The search for punitive forces, which began during the Great Patriotic War, continued until the early 80s. The last trial took place in 1982.
Ice battle on Polisti
...The massacre of civilians in the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok, Poddorsky district, was unparalleled in its cruelty. The villages were shelled with mortars, and then the punitive forces burst in and began throwing grenades at people. They drove the surviving children, women and old people onto the ice of the Polist River and shot them almost point-blank with machine guns. Then 253 people were killed and villages were burned to the ground. These bastards could not even imagine that anyone could survive, but some still survived. They crawled on the bloody ice and survived to tell about what happened on that terrible Epiphany - January 19, 1942.
On December 16, 1942, in the area of the villages of Pochinok and Bychkovo, a battle took place between partisans and a punitive detachment, as a result of which 17 Germans and police were killed.
On December 19, 1942, a punitive detachment with two tanks and one armored vehicle burst into these villages. The population was asked to prepare for eviction within 30 minutes.
By order of the head of the punitive detachment, about 300 people were driven to the Polist River and opened fire on them with machine guns, machine guns and mortars. The ice on the river collapsed due to mine explosions. The dead and wounded drowned and were carried away under the ice. The Germans did not allow the removal of the corpses remaining on the ice in the spring of 1943; they were carried away into Lake Ilmen.”
Tamara Pavlovna Ivanova, born in 1924, a native of the village of Pochinok, Belebelkovsky (now Poddorsky) district of the Leningrad (now Novgorod) region, was seriously wounded by punitive forces on December 19, 1942 during the execution of residents of the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok. Eleven of her relatives were killed. Her story about the tragedy on the Polist River during the court hearing excited not only those present in the hall, but also the composition of the court. Simple, uncomplicated poems written by witness Ivanova showed the full tragedy of the situation, the role of Nazi collaborators in the destruction of civilians:
We went to our death and
We said goodbye to each other,
We walked quietly behind each other,
And the children smiled so tenderly,
And they didn’t know where they were taking us.
We were taken to the river, onto the ice,
They ordered us to stand in place in formation,
The enemy pointed a machine gun in front of us
It began to rain leaden rain...
T.P. Ivanova acted as a witness in criminal cases against Grigory Gurevich (Gurvich), Nikolai Ivanov, Konstantin Grigoriev, Pavel Burov, Egor Timofeev, Konstantin Zakharevich. Her personal tragedy during the war was later reflected in the documentary film Case No. 21.
On November 26, 1943, the Yagdkommando-38 unit, formed from Hitler’s accomplices, carried out a punitive operation against residents of the villages of Doskino, Tanina Gora and Torchinovo, Batetsky district, Leningrad region. The punitive forces attacked the forest camp of civilians, surrounded it, and killed those who tried to escape. In total, punitive forces killed more than 150 people in the Pandrino tract.
Retired KGB Colonel Vasily Mikheev participated in the investigation of criminal cases related to the betrayal and execution of Medved underground fighters. For thirty years, Vasily Petrovich was engaged in the search for former SS men, punishers disguised under false names in different parts of the world. One was found in West Germany, another in Argentina, a third in the USA... And all the long years of work in the KGB, a terrible picture from the past stood in his eyes.
- It was in the cold autumn of 1943. The fascist henchman Vaska Likhomanov rode on horseback and dragged a boy of about fifteen along with him on a rope: over bumps, through mud... We were on reconnaissance duty and could not help, we had no right. I already told myself then: “If I don’t die before victory, I’ll lay down my whole life so that not a single bastard remains unpunished on our land.”
He went along with the 4th Tank Army along a long front line from the Kursk Bulge to Prague and survived. The reconnaissance motorcyclist of the 2nd motorcycle company, awarded with many military orders and medals, after the Great Victory, began a new offensive operation to search for and bring to justice all state criminals who, during the war, destroyed thousands of innocent people and burned hundreds of villages in the Novgorod region. The professional memory of a security officer stores all the episodes of his investigative counterintelligence work. He remembers not only the names of the criminals, but also the names of the villages, cities and regions where they were hiding from retribution, the names of their relatives and even their fictitious names.
“The search for traitors to the Motherland,” says Vasily Petrovich, “began immediately after the liberation of the region, in 1944. Only in the territory of our small region was created a whole network of punitive Jagdkommandos and Sonderkommandos, the 667th Shelon battalion, the Volotovo police, which were distinguished by special atrocities, SS and SD teams, the gendarmerie and other formations. They managed to exterminate so many of our people that it’s amazing how we survived.
There are few Novgorodians left who remember the trial that took place in the building of the drama theater in December 1947. At that time, there were nineteen soldiers of the Nazi army in the dock. At that trial, they also talked about the 667th punitive battalion “Shelon”, among whose leaders was a traitor to the Motherland, former captain of the Soviet Army Alexander Riss. Vasily Petrovich had to work a lot, looking for participants in atrocities from the battalion under his command.
The massacre of civilians in the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok, Poddorsky district, was unparalleled in its cruelty. The villages were shelled with mortars, and then the punitive forces burst in and began throwing grenades at people. They drove the surviving children, women and old people onto the ice of the Polist River and shot them almost point-blank with machine guns. Then 253 people were killed and villages were burned to the ground. These bastards could not even imagine that anyone could survive, but some still survived. They crawled on the bloody ice and survived to tell about what happened on that terrible Epiphany - January 19, 1942.
“This crime had to be investigated with extraordinary scrupulousness,” recalls Mikheev. - We looked for documents about the 667th battalion in our archives and even in archives abroad. We carefully reviewed 40 criminal cases against previously convicted punishers. The criminals tried to stay away from their homes, and even further away from the places where they committed massacres. In that case, we interrogated more than a hundred people, drew up maps of the execution sites, carried out exhumations and examinations. During this investigation, I became convinced for the first time how arrogant and cynical these people were; they cannot even be called that. Our employees barely managed to restrain themselves from anger and indignation when the criminals came for interrogations in military uniform with Soviet orders and medals. Among them was Pavel Aleksashkin.
Former senior lieutenant of the Red Army Aleksashkin surrendered in 1941. He voluntarily enlisted in the Shelon punitive battalion. He was close to Riess and received awards from the Germans. Then he was convicted, but after serving the minimum term, he settled in Siberia, and then in the Yaroslavl town of Petushki. According to our counterintelligence, he was an eyewitness to many executions on our territory. Aleksashkin was summoned to Novgorod as a witness.
“We were shocked,” recalls Vasily Petrovich. “I even thought that the wrong person had been called in for questioning by mistake.” A man in military uniform appeared before us, only without shoulder straps. Several lines of order bars were screwed onto his uniform, and on the other side there were badges with the symbols of the Great Patriotic War. We rolled our eyes and began to clarify... No, this is the same punisher Aleksashkin. In order to extract testimony from him, they even had to take this cadre to the execution sites, otherwise he would refuse everything. And even more stunned was the response of our Yaroslavl colleagues to our request. They reported that Aleksashkin, it turns out, was listed as a participant in the war, received awards through military registration and enlistment offices, visited schools, colleges and universities, where he told young people about his “heroic” deeds. The local government gave him a preferential loan to build a house and provided him with building materials. They even gave him custom street lighting. In general, Pasha lived happily ever after in Petushki. Only after our intervention was he deprived of all his awards and the residents of the city explained who he really was... And he was far from alone.
Historical information:
667th Russian Jaeger Ost-Battalion "Shelon"
(field mail - Feldpost - 33581A)
Place and time of formation:
in the area of the Dno railway junction station in the villages of Skugry and Nekhotovo (Novgorod region) a few km from the city of Dno in the fall of 1942.
Contingent:
local volunteer residents and prisoners of war from among the prisoners of the camp near the village. Skugrs from 19-37 years old. Most of them were previously used by intelligence services in punitive squads or intelligence networks. They took the oath, received a uniform, and received all types of allowances. Subsequently, the base was replenished by mobilizations of the local population, as well as military personnel from the disbanded Russians of the 310th Field Gendarmerie Battalion, the 410th Security Battalion, and the anti-partisan company of the headquarters of the 16th German Army.
Structure:
headquarters in the village Krivitsy, Volotovsky district, Novgorod region. 6 companies, each with 100 people.
Region of operation:
Dnovsky, Volotovsky, Dedovichsky districts. Since the beginning of 1942, he was constantly in battles Serbolovo-Tatinets-Lake Polisto. In the spring of 1943, he took part in the operation against partisans in the rear of the 16th Army, “Deforestation,” later Operation North. Constant executions of local residents and partisans.
Dislocation:
Stage 1 - southwest of the Leningrad region. Headquarters and 2 companies in the villages of Aleksino and Nivki, Dedovichi district, a stronghold in the village of Petrovo, Belebelkinsky district.
In November 1943, he was transferred to Skagen (Denmark) in the north of the Jutland Peninsula, where he guarded the sea coast as part of the 714th Grenadier Regiment of the ROA (its 3rd battalion). In the winter of 1945, he was merged into one of the regiments of the 2nd division of the KONR Armed Forces. Dissolved in Czechoslovakia.
Weapons:
rifles, machine guns, grenades, MG heavy and light machine guns, company and battalion mortars (weapons of Soviet and German production).
Guardianship:
Abvergruppa-310 at the 16th Air Force (Feldpost 14700), 753rd Eastern Regiment (later the Findeisen Central Bank), Koryuk-584, department 1C of the 16th Army.
Command:
1. Riess Alexander Ivanovich (Alexander Riess), German, born in 1904, native of the village of Alty-Parmak, Evpatoria district, Taurida province (later - the village of Panino, Razdolnensky district of Crimea). A former captain of the Red Army, in 1938 he was arrested on suspicion of belonging to German intelligence agencies, spent 2 years in a pre-trial detention center, after which he was released due to lack of evidence. He was reinstated in the Red Army and appointed commander of the battalion of the 524th Infantry Regiment, formed in the city of Bereznyaki, Perm Region. In July 1941, in the first battle, battalion commander Riess voluntarily went over to the side of the Germans in the battle near Idritsa (Pskov region). In his own words, he pointed out to the Germans all the communists among the prisoners captured in the battle, after which they were shot.
Since August 1941, he served in the Abwehr as a teacher in Abwehrgruppe-301, Major Hofmeier and AG-111. Nicknames "Romanov", aka "Hart" ("Hard"). He was involved in the preparation and deployment of agents from the southern shore of the lake. Ilmen to the rear of Soviet troops. During the deployment of AG-310 in the village. Mston personally shot and tortured local residents of the Starorussky district, accusing them of helping Red Army intelligence officers.
By order of the leadership, he took an active part in the formation of the 667th Russian eastern battalion “Shelon”, named after the nearby river. At the first stage he commanded the 2nd company of the battalion, and from April 1943 he headed the battalion. In this position, he also repeatedly personally shot citizens suspected of having connections with the partisans.
Awarded two Iron Crosses and several medals. Major (“Sonderführer”) of the Wehrmacht.
He was on the list of wanted state criminals under number 665. After the end of the war, he lived in Germany, in the cities of Bad Aibling, Kreuzburg and Rosenheim, and participated in the work of the NTS. In 1949, he went to the United States for permanent residence, received citizenship, and lived in Cleveland, Ohio under the surname Riess.
2. The first commander of the newly formed battalion was German Major Karl Schiwek, companies - 1st Captain Meyer, 3rd - Lieutenant Foerst, 4th Lieutenant Zalder, 5th - Lieutenant Walger (Walger), 6th - Oberleutnant Kollit, 2nd company - Sonderfuehrer Riess, adjutant to the battalion commander Daniel, orderly officer - Lieutenant Schumacher, translators - Sonderfuehrers Schmidt and Lavendel. A few months later, in connection with the successful combat adaptation of personnel to service in the German army, Alexander Riess was appointed commander of the 667th battalion, Captain Mayer as an adviser, company commanders - 1st - Sidorenko, 2nd - Radchenko (it was to him that Riess handed over his company), 3rd - Koshelap, 4th - Tsalder.
3. Company commanders - N. Koshelap - born 1922, native. Kyiv region, commander of the 3rd company of the battalion, captain, graduated from the ROA school in Dabendorf, after which he was appointed commander of the 3rd company of the 667th East Battalion; awarded German medals. Arrested, sentenced to 25 years, released in 1960, lived in Vorkuta.
The commander of the reconnaissance group (Yagd-team) of the battalion, Konstantin Grigoriev, surrendered in August 1941, studied at reconnaissance schools in Vyatsati and Vikhula, served in the punitive detachment of Lieutenant Shpitsky, after his defeat by partisans in February 1942, one of the first volunteers 667th East Battalion.
Participant in a number of successful anti-partisan operations, took part in mass executions. After being seriously wounded and cured, he served in AG-203, preparing to be deployed to the Soviet rear in the area of Lake. Balaton; due to health reasons, he was demobilized at the end of 1944 with the rank of Wehrmacht sergeant major with the Iron Cross 2nd class, medals “For the Winter Campaign in the East”, “For Bravery” (twice), the Assault Badge, and the Badge “For Wounding”. After the end of the war, he lived in Germany, was convicted by a German court of a criminal offense (smuggling), during the investigation he informed that he was a Soviet citizen and applied for repatriation, posing as a victim of fascism. While traveling with a group of repatriates, he committed several thefts and was convicted by a Soviet court. For similar crimes, a term in prison was added to the original term. In 1956 he was released, arrived in Leningrad, and committed another crime. During the investigation, G. became interested in the KGB. On May 30, 1960, at the trial, the military tribunal of the Leningrad Region sentenced G. to capital punishment.
Deputy battalion commander - Pavel Radchenko, aka Viktor Moiseenko, born in 1919, born in the village. Grushevki, Srebnyansky district, Chernigov region, Ukrainian, former soldier of the Red Army. At the first stage of the existence of the 667th battalion, he commanded a platoon of the 2nd company. In March 1944 he headed the 2nd company. At the same time, he was deputy battalion commander (A.I. Rissa) and, in his absence, acted as battalion commander. In 1945, after Rissa left the battalion, he was appointed its commander.
In the summer of 1943, Radchenko’s company burned the village of Lyady, Utorgoshsky district of NO. In 1945, R. led the battalion, was awarded the Life Code and medals, and was a Wehrmacht captain. After the war, he also lived in Cleveland (USA) under the name Viktor Moiseenko. A search case was opened at the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR for the Chernigov region, but was terminated due to the identification of the person involved living abroad. Conducted correspondence with relatives, controlled by censorship.
In fact, we know little about the Great Patriotic War and many of its events remain unknown to many ordinary people. However, it is our duty to remember what happened at that terrible time in order to prevent a repeat of the senseless death of millions of people. This post will shed light on one of the many episodes of the Second World War that not everyone knows about.
In 1944, from various anti-partisan and punitive units, on the orders of Himmler, the formation of a special unit, the Jagdverbandt, began. The groups "Ost" and "West" operated in the western and eastern directions. Plus a special team - "Yangengeinsack Russland und Gesand". “Jagdverbandt-Balticum” was also included there.
She specialized in terrorist activities in the Baltic countries, which after the occupation were divided into general districts: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The latter also included Pskov, Novgorod, Luga, Slantsy - the entire territory up to Leningrad.
The elementary cell of this peculiar pyramid became the “anti-partisan group”, which recruited those who were ready to sell themselves to the Germans for a can of stew.
Armed with Soviet weapons, sometimes dressed in Red Army uniforms with insignia in their buttonholes, the bandits entered the village. If they came across policemen along the way, the “guests” mercilessly shot them. Then questions began like “how can we find “our people”?
There were simple-minded people who were ready to help strangers, and then this is what happened:
“On December 31, 1943, two guys came to our village of Stega and began asking local residents how they could find the partisans. The girl Zina, who lived in the village of Stega, said that she had such a connection.
At the same time, she indicated where the partisans were located. These guys soon left, and the next day a punitive detachment burst into the village...
They surrounded the village, drove all the residents out of their homes and then divided them into groups. Old people and children were driven into the barnyard, and young girls were escorted to the station to be sent to forced labor. The punitive forces set fire to the barnyard, where the population that had been driven there was located: mostly old people and children.
Among them were me and my grandmother and my two cousins: 10 and 6 years old. People screamed and begged for mercy, then the punishers entered the yard and started shooting at everyone who was there. I was the only one who managed to escape from our family.
The next day, I, together with a group of citizens from the village of Stega who were working on the road, went to where the cattle yard used to be. There we saw the corpses of burnt women and children. Many lay hugging...
Two weeks later, the punitive forces carried out the same reprisals against residents of the villages of Glushnevo and Suslovo, who were also destroyed along with all the inhabitants" - from the testimony of witness Pavel Grabovsky (b. 1928), a native of the village of Grabovo, Maryn village council of the Ashevsky district; letter file No. 005/5 "Sov. secret").
According to eyewitnesses, a detachment under the command of a certain Martynovsky and his closest assistant Reshetnikov carried out especially atrocities in the Pskov region. The security officers managed to get on the trail of the last of the punishers many years after the end of the war (criminal case No. A-15511).
In the early 1960s, one of the residents of the region contacted the regional KGB department. Driving through some stop, she recognized the humble lineman... as a punisher who took part in the execution of civilians in her native village during the war. And although the train stopped for only a few minutes, a glance was enough for her to understand: he!
This is how the investigators met a certain Gerasimov, nicknamed Pashka the Sailor, who, at the very first interrogation, admitted that he was part of an anti-partisan detachment.
“Yes, I took part in the executions,” Gerasimov was indignant during interrogations, “But I was only a performer.”
“In May 1944, our detachment was located in the village of Zhaguli, Drissensky district, Vitebsk region. One evening we went on an operation against the partisans. As a result of the fighting, we suffered significant losses, and the platoon commander, German army lieutenant Boris Pshik, was killed.
At the same time, we captured a large group of civilians who were hiding in the forest. These were mostly older women. There were also children there.
Having learned that Pshik had been killed, Martynovsky ordered the prisoners to be divided into two parts. After that, pointing to one of them, he ordered: “Shoot for the soul!”
Someone ran into the forest and found a hole, where they later took the people. After this, Reshetnikov began to select punishers to carry out the order. At the same time, he named Pashka the Sailor, Narets Oscar, Nikolai Frolov...
They took the people into the forest, stood them in front of the pit, and stood a few meters away from them. Martynovsky was sitting on a stump at that time, not far from the place of execution.
I stood next to him and told him that he could get punished by the Germans for his unauthorized actions, to which Martynovsky replied that he didn’t care about the Germans and he just needed to keep his mouth shut.
After that he said: “Igorek, get to work!” And Reshetnikov gave the order: “Fire!” After this, the punishers started shooting. Having pushed aside the punishers, Gerasimov made his way to the edge of the pit and, shouting “Polundra!”, began firing from his pistol, although he had a machine gun hanging behind his back.
Martynovsky himself did not participate in the execution, but Reshetnikov tried” - from the testimony of Vasily Terekhov, one of the fighters of Martynovsky’s detachment; criminal case No. A-15511.
Not wanting to be held accountable for the “exploits” of the traitors, Pashka the Sailor handed over his “colleagues” wholeheartedly. The first person he named was a certain Igor Reshetnikov, Martynovsky’s right hand, whom the operatives soon found behind barbed wire in one of the camps located near Vorkuta.
It immediately became clear that he received his 25 years in prison for... espionage for a foreign state. As it turned out, after the surrender of Germany, Reshetnikov ended up in the American zone, where he was recruited by intelligence. In the fall of 1947, he was transported on a special mission to the Soviet occupation zone.
For this, the new patrons promised him a residence permit overseas, but SMERSH intervened in the matter, whose employees identified the traitor. A quick court determined his punishment.
Finding himself in the far north, Reshetnikov decided that no one would remember his punitive past and that he would be released with a clean passport. However, his hopes were dashed when his former subordinate, Pashka the Sailor, conveyed to him a kind of greeting from the distant past.
In the end, under the pressure of irrefutable evidence, Reshetnikov began to testify, omitting, however, his personal participation in punitive actions.
For the dirtiest work, the Germans looked for assistants, as a rule, among declassed elements and criminals. A certain Martynovsky, a Pole by origin, was ideal for this role. After leaving the camp in 1940, having been deprived of the right to reside in Leningrad, he settled in Luga.
Having waited for the Nazis to arrive, he voluntarily offered them his services. He was immediately sent to a special school, after which he received the rank of lieutenant in the Wehrmacht.
For some time, Martynovsky served at the headquarters of one of the punitive units in Pskov, and then the Germans, noticing his zeal, instructed him to form an anti-partisan group.
At the same time, Igor Reshetnikov, who returned from prison on June 21, 1941, joined her. An important detail: his father also went to serve the Germans, becoming burgomaster of the city of Luga.
According to the invaders' plan, Martynovsky's gang was supposed to pose as partisans of other formations. They were supposed to penetrate into areas where the people's avengers were active, conduct reconnaissance, destroy patriots, carry out raids under the guise of partisans and rob the local population.
To disguise themselves, their leaders had to know the names and surnames of the leaders of large partisan formations. For each successful operation, the bandits were generously paid, so the gang earned occupation marks not out of fear, but out of conscience.
In particular, with the help of Martynovsky’s gang, several partisan appearances were uncovered in the Sebezh region. At the same time, in the village of Chernaya Gryaz, Reshetnikov personally shot and killed Konstantin Fish, the intelligence chief of one of the Belarusian partisan brigades, who was going to establish contact with his Russian neighbors.
In November 1943, bandits were on the trail of two groups of scouts at once, thrown to the rear from the “mainland”. They managed to surround one of them, led by Captain Rumyantsev.
The fight was unequal. With the last bullet, intelligence officer Nina Donkukova wounded Martynovsky, but was captured and sent to the local Gestapo office. The girl was tortured for a long time, but having achieved nothing, the Germans brought her to Martynovsky’s detachment, giving her “to be devoured by the wolves.”
From the testimony of false partisans:
“On March 9, 1942, in the village of Yelemno, Sabutitsky s/council, traitors to our people Igor Reshetnikov from Luga and Mikhail Ivanov from the village of Vysokaya Griva chose as a target for a shooting exercise a resident of Yelemno Fedorov Boris (b. 1920), who died as a result.
In the village of Klobutitsy, Klobutitsy s/soviet, on September 17, 1942, 12 women and 3 men were shot simply because a railroad was blown up in the immediate vicinity of the village."
“There was such a guy in our detachment - Vasily Petrov. During the war, he served as an officer and, as it turned out, was connected with the partisans.
He wanted to lead the detachment into partisans and save them from treason. Reshetnikov found out about this and told Martynovsky everything. Together they killed this Vasily. They also shot his family: his wife and daughter. This was, I think, on November 7, 1943. I was then very impressed by the small felt boots...”
“There was also such a case: when during one of the operations near Polotsk... the partisans attacked us. We retreated. Suddenly Reshetnikov appeared. He began to swear and shout at us.
Here, in my presence... he shot the nurse and Viktor Alexandrov, who served in my platoon. By order of Reshetnikov, a 16-year-old teenage girl was raped. This was done by his orderly Mikhail Alexandrov.
Reshetnikov then told him: come on, I’ll remove 10 punishments for this. Later, Reshetnikov also shot his mistress Maria Pankratova. He killed her in the bath out of jealousy" - from the testimony at the trial of Pavel Gerasimov (Sailor); criminal case No. A-15511.
Truly terrible was the fate of the women of those places where the detachment passed. Occupying the village, the bandits selected the most beautiful concubines for themselves.
They had to wash, sew, cook, satisfy the lust of this always drunk team. And when she changed her location, this peculiar female convoy, as a rule, was shot and recruited new victims in a new place.
“On May 21, 1944, the punitive detachment moved from the village of Kokhanovichi through Sukhorukovo to our village - Bichigovo. I was not at home, and my family lived in a hut near the cemetery. They were discovered, and their daughter was taken with them to the village of Vidoki.
The mother began to look for her daughter, went to Vidoki, but there was an ambush there, and she was killed. Then I went, and my daughter, it turns out, was beaten, tortured, raped and killed. I found it only along the edge of the dress: the grave was poorly buried.
In Vidoki, punitive forces caught children, women, and old people, drove them into a bathhouse and burned them. When I was looking for my daughter, I was present as they dismantled the bathhouse: 30 people died there” - from the testimony at the trial of witness Pavel Kuzmich Sauluk; criminal case No. A-15511.
Nadezhda Borisevich is one of the many victims of werewolves.
Thus, the tangle of bloody crimes of this gang, which began its inglorious path near Luga, was gradually unraveled. Then there were punitive actions in the Pskov, Ostrovsky, and Pytalovsky districts.
Near Novorzhev, the punitive forces fell into a partisan ambush and were almost completely destroyed by the 3rd partisan brigade under the command of Alexander German.
However, the leaders - Martynovsky himself and Reshetnikov - managed to escape. Having abandoned their subordinates in the cauldron, they came to their German masters, expressing a desire to continue serving not out of fear, but out of conscience. So the newly formed team of traitors ended up in the Sebezh region, and then on the territory of Belarus.
After the summer offensive of 1944, as a result of which Pskov was liberated, this imaginary partisan detachment reached Riga itself, where the Jagdverbandt-OST headquarters was located.
Here the YAGD gang of Martynovsky - Reshetnikov amazed even their owners with pathological drunkenness and unbridled morals. For this reason, already in the fall of the same year, this rabble was sent to the small Polish town of Hohensaltz, where they began to master sabotage training.
Somewhere along the way, Reshetnikov dealt with Martynovsky and his family: his two-year-old son, wife and mother-in-law, who were traveling with the detachment.
According to Gerasimov, “that same night they were buried in a ditch near the house where they lived. Then one of ours, nicknamed Mole, brought gold that belonged to the Martynovskys.”
When the Germans missed their henchman, Reshetnikov explained what happened by saying that he allegedly tried to escape, so he was forced to act according to the laws of war.
For this and other “feats,” the Nazis awarded Reshetnikov the title of SS Hauptsturmführer, awarded him the Iron Cross and... sent him to suppress resistance in Croatia and Hungary.
They were also trained to work deep in the Soviet rear. For this purpose, parachute business was studied especially carefully. However, the rapid advance of the Soviet army confused all the plans of this motley team of German special forces.
This gang ended its “combat path” ingloriously: in the spring of 1945, surrounded by Soviet tanks, almost all of it died, unable to break through to the main forces of the Germans.
The exception was only a few people, among whom was Reshetnikov himself.
VKontakte
A German instructor teaches Vlasov combat tactics
The history of every war has its heroes and its villains. The Great Patriotic War is no exception. Many pages of that terrible era are covered in darkness, including those that are embarrassing to remember. Yes, there are topics that are studiously avoided when discussing the history of the war. One of these unpleasant topics is collaborationism.
What is collaborationism? In the academic definition given by international law, this is - conscious, voluntary and deliberate cooperation with the enemy, in his interests and to the detriment of his state. In our case, when it comes to the Great Patriotic War, collaborationism is cooperation with the Nazi occupiers. Policemen and Vlasovites end up here, and along with them all others who went to serve the German authorities. And there were such people - and there were many of them!
Many Soviet citizens, finding themselves in captivity or in occupied territory, went into the service of the Germans. Their names were not widely announced, and we were not particularly interested in them, contemptuously calling them “policemen” and “traitors.”
If you face the truth, you have to admit: there were traitors. They served in the police, carried out punitive operations - and acted in such a way that seasoned SS executioners might envy them. They left their bloody traces in the Smolensk region...
According to FSB Colonel A. Kuzov, who was involved in the search for traitors in the Soviet years, there were many punitive units operating in the Smolensk region. Many historians believe that on Smolensk soil, the Nazis began to create armed detachments from Soviet citizens, primarily from prisoners of war, earlier than in other occupied territories.
After all, there were many prisoners of war here: it was in the Smolensk region that one of the largest catastrophes of the initial period of the war took place - the encirclement of parts of the Western and Reserve Fronts to the west of Vyazma in October 1941. And not everyone who was surrounded was ready to bravely overcome the hardships of captivity and concentration camps - some went into the service of the Nazis in the hope of surviving at any cost, even at the cost of betrayal. From these units were formed to fight partisans and carry out punitive actions.
It would take a long time to list these units, since they were actively created: the Volga-Tatar legion “Idel-Ural”, Ukrainian nationalist hundreds, Cossack battalions, Vlasovites: 624, 625, 626, 629th battalions of the so-called Russian Liberation Army. There are many black “feats” behind these units.
On May 28, 1942, punitive forces of the 229th ROA battalion machine-gunned the children, women and elderly people of the Titovo farm. The same punitive detachment destroyed the village of Ivanovichi. All residents were shot in the back of the head. Once, punitive forces shot one and a half thousand civilians over the course of three days.
In the village of Starozavopye, Yartsevo district, punitive forces hanged 17 people on one gallows. Among those hanged were three children.
The Vlasovites launched a punitive operation in Belarus, destroying 16 villages in two weeks. They were guided by the principle: “History will write everything off.” The Belarusian village of Khatyn, world-famous for its tragedy, was destroyed by the 624th ROA battalion, which had previously “worked” in our area - about three hundred Smolensk villages shared the fate of Khatyn. They say that if you collected their ashes, you would get a stele 20 meters high...
During the occupation, 657 civilians were shot in the Yartsevo district alone. 83 people were tortured, brutally killed and burned, 42 were hanged. 75 villages were burned.
The punitive forces acted cruelly and barbarously.
One of the punitive detachments of the so-called “Schmidt group”, based in the village of Prechistoye at the field gendarmerie, was headed by former senior lieutenant Vasily Tarakanov. His punitive company carried out raids in the surrounding area, destroying villages in the Baturinsky, Dukhovshchinsky, Prechistensky and Yartsevsky districts (now these are the territories of the Yartsevo and Dukhovshchinsky districts).
Tarakanov Vasily Dmitrievich, Born in 1917, native of the Yaroslavl region. Before the war, he graduated from school, worked as a projectionist, and studied at the military infantry school. For a year he fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In the summer of 1942 he surrendered.
In captivity, Tarakanov began to collaborate with the Germans, took an oath of allegiance to the Third Reich and entered service in the punitive unit. This detachment operated in the Smolensk and Bryansk regions. Vasily Tarakanov’s company “worked” especially cruelly with the population in the Yartsevo district.
On February 15, 1943, in the village of Gutorovo, punitive forces shot and burned 147 women, old people and children. The policemen practiced shooting at live targets.
The punishers from the Tarakan company were distinguished by their characteristic style: they shot people right in their huts. First they killed the adults, then they finished off the children. The “company commander” himself got into the eye of a woman or child on a dare. Tarakanov had a kind of “standard” for killings - five people a day. And in the village of Gutorovo, the punisher, getting excited, shot seven people at once with a machine gun.
Eyewitnesses recalled that the punitive forces killed people casually, for no apparent reason. Many residents were shot in their huts “just like that.” Tarakanov personally threw two small children into the fire. For conscientious service in establishing the “new order,” Tarakanov was awarded three German medals and received an officer rank, which in itself is eloquent, because the Germans tried not to assign officer ranks to Russians, as representatives of the “lower race.” So, I have served myself to the fullest...
Tarakanov’s comrade-in-arms, the sadistic punitive Fyodor Zykov, was also respected by his bloody accomplices.
Zykov Fedor Ivanovich, Born in 1919, native of the Kalinin region. Before the war, he was a Komsomol activist and a people's court assessor. He began fighting in Belarus in 1941. In the fall of the same year, he was captured and, having gone over to the side of the Germans, became part of the Schmidt Group. He fought in V. Tarakanov's company. During the liberation of the Smolensk region, he retreated along with Wehrmacht units. He was trained at a special school in the city of Letzen and, as part of 50 Vlasov officers, was sent to serve in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz).
Zykov’s inhuman cynicism discouraged even his Nazi superiors. While escorting someone to execution, Zykov polished his well-groomed nails with a manicure file along the way…. then with a well-groomed hand he raised the parabellum and killed the person.
Sometimes he would go into fits of rage, and then Zykov would shout that he would one day burn all of Russia - just as he burned the entire Prechistensky district.
Zykov personally tortured captured partisans. Thus, the sadist cut off the feet and hands of seventeen-year-old Alexander Prudnikov, cut off his ears, nose, tongue with a dagger, carved stars on his body, gouged out his eyes - and continued this monstrous massacre for several hours. The punishers tried to destroy all witnesses to their crimes. Fortunately, some eyewitnesses managed to escape.
Thanks to their testimony, it was possible to bring to justice many punishers and policemen - for example, such “craftsmen” as the gunsmith Ivanchenko, who repaired the punitive weapons in the village of Titovo. Ivanchenko tested the combat effectiveness of weapons on civilians, thus shooting 90 people. He hanged himself after receiving a summons.
But the main characters in our story - Vasily Tarakanov and Fyodor Zykov - turned out to be, as they say, seasoned wolves.
Tarakanov, having fallen into the hands of the Soviet authorities after the war, managed to hide his participation in the activities of the “Schmidt group” and went through the case as an ordinary policeman. He was given 25 years in the camps, but after 7 years he was released. The victorious country generously pardoned yesterday's enemies...
After his release, the executioner lived in the village of Kupanskoye, Yaroslavl region. In a quiet, picturesque place, he lived as a secluded old man, having managed to start a family, becoming a grandfather, and running a household. And he even received “quietly” two anniversary awards: “20 years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945” and “50 years of the Armed Forces of the USSR.” But his instincts did not allow him to relax: when in 1987, 45 years after his betrayal, KGB investigators came to see him, they found the old man Tarakanov under the feather bed loaded with buckshot.
Punisher Tarakanov received retribution only after more than forty years - in February 1987.
And his accomplice Fyodor Zykov lived in Vyshny Volochyok, now the Tver region. He also managed to hide his “exploits” from Soviet state security. And he also wore anniversary medals issued by the military registration and enlistment office... His name began to appear during the next verification of the statement regarding the execution of residents of the village of Gutorovo. This also happened more than forty years after the war.
When Zykov was arrested, he asked to play the accordion for the last time. A particularly cynical touch - the exposed punisher played... “Farewell of the Slav”.
Forty years have passed since the destruction of Smolensk villages. But the years could not reduce the guilt of the aged punishers. In 1987, 70-year-old Tarakanov was tried at the Palace of Culture of Railway Workers of Smolensk, whose merits were awarded capital punishment. And two years later, on May 5, 1989, the death sentence of 70-year-old Zykov was announced here. In 1988, Tarakanov was shot. Zykov followed him two years later. These were one of the last death sentences carried out in the Soviet Union.
They try not to advertise these pages of history - after all, it is generally accepted that the heroism of the Soviet people was massive and universal. But it is known that from one and a half to two million Soviet citizens collaborated with the occupiers. We must not forget the bloody results of this cooperation. If only because the Smolensk region is the only region in Russia that has never been able to restore its pre-war population...
During the Great Patriotic War, in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, the Nazis and their henchmen from among the local traitors committed many war crimes against civilians and captured military personnel. The salvos of Victory had not yet been fired in Berlin, and the Soviet state security agencies were already faced with an important and rather difficult task - to investigate all the crimes of the Nazis, to identify and detain those responsible for them, and to bring them to justice.
The search for Nazi war criminals began during the Great Patriotic War and has not been completed to this day. After all, there are no time limits or statutes of limitations for the atrocities that the Nazis committed on Soviet soil. As soon as Soviet troops liberated the occupied territories, operational and investigative agencies immediately began working there, primarily the Smersh counterintelligence service. Thanks to the Smershevites, as well as military personnel and police officers, a large number of accomplices of Nazi Germany were identified from among the local population.
Former police officers received criminal convictions under Article 58 of the USSR Criminal Code and were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, usually from ten to fifteen years. Since the war-ravaged country needed workers, the death penalty was applied only to the most notorious and odious executioners. Many policemen served their time and returned home in the 1950s and 1960s. But some of the collaborators managed to avoid arrest by posing as civilians or even ascribing heroic biographies to participants in the Great Patriotic War as part of the Red Army.
For example, Pavel Aleksashkin commanded a punitive unit of policemen in Belarus. When the USSR won the Great Patriotic War, Aleksashkin was able to hide his personal participation in war crimes. He was given a short prison term for his service with the Germans. After his release from the camp, Aleksashkin moved to the Yaroslavl region and soon, plucking up courage, began to pose as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Having managed to obtain the necessary documents, he began to receive all the benefits due to veterans, periodically he was awarded orders and medals, and was invited to speak at schools in front of Soviet children - to talk about his military journey. And the former Nazi punisher lied without a twinge of conscience, attributing to himself the exploits of others and carefully hiding his true face. But when the security authorities needed Aleksashkin’s testimony in the case of one of the war criminals, they made a request at his place of residence and found that the former policeman was pretending to be a veteran of the Great Patriotic War.
One of the first trials of Nazi war criminals took place on July 14-17, 1943 in Krasnodar. The Great Patriotic War was still in full swing, and in the Krasnodar cinema "Giant" the trial of eleven Nazi collaborators from the SS Sonderkommando "10-a" was taking place. More than 7 thousand civilians of Krasnodar and the Krasnodar Territory were killed in gas vans. The immediate leaders of the massacres were German Gestapo officers, but executions were carried out by executioners from among local traitors.
Vasily Petrovich Tishchenko, born in 1914, joined the occupation police in August 1942, then became a foreman of the SS Sonderkommando “10-a”, and later a Gestapo investigator. Nikolai Semenovich Pushkarev, born in 1915, served in the Sonderkommando as a squad commander, Ivan Anisimovich Rechkalov, born in 1911, evaded mobilization into the Red Army and, after the entry of German troops, joined the Sonderkommando. Grigory Nikitich Misan, born in 1916, was also a volunteer policeman, like the previously convicted Ivan Fedorovich Kotomtsev, born in 1918. Yunus Mitsukhovich Naptsok, born 1914, took part in the torture and execution of Soviet citizens; Ignatiy Fedorovich Kladov, born in 1911; Mikhail Pavlovich Lastovina, born in 1883; Grigory Petrovich Tuchkov, born in 1909; Vasily Stepanovich Pavlov, born in 1914; Ivan Ivanovich Paramonov, born 1923 The trial was quick and fair. On July 17, 1943, Tishchenko, Rechkalov, Pushkarev, Naptsok, Misan, Kotomtsev, Kladov and Lastovina were sentenced to capital punishment and on July 18, 1943, hanged in the central square of Krasnodar. Paramonov, Tuchkov and Pavlov received 20 years in prison.
However, other members of Sonderkommando 10-a then managed to escape punishment. Twenty years passed before a new trial of Hitler’s henchmen, the executioners who killed Soviet people, took place in Krasnodar in the fall of 1963. Nine people appeared before the court - former policemen Alois Weich, Valentin Skripkin, Mikhail Eskov, Andrei Sukhov, Valerian Surguladze, Nikolai Zhirukhin, Emelyan Buglak, Uruzbek Dzampaev, Nikolai Psarev. All of them took part in the massacres of civilians in the Rostov region, Krasnodar region, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Valentin Skripkin lived in Taganrog before the war, was a promising football player, and with the beginning of the German occupation he joined the police force. He hid until 1956, until the amnesty, and then legalized, worked at a bakery. It took six years of painstaking work for the security officers to establish: Skripkin personally participated in many murders of Soviet people, including the terrible massacre in Zmievskaya Balka in Rostov-on-Don.
Mikhail Eskov was a Black Sea sailor who took part in the defense of Sevastopol. Two sailors stood in a trench on Pesochnaya Bay against German tankettes. One sailor died and was buried in a mass grave, forever remaining a hero. Eskov was shell-shocked. This is how he ended up among the Germans, and then, out of despair, he enlisted in a Sonderkommando platoon and became a war criminal. In 1943, he was arrested for the first time - for serving in German auxiliary units, and was given ten years. In 1953, Eskov was released, only to be imprisoned again in 1963.
Nikolai Zhirukhin worked as a labor teacher in one of the schools in Novorossiysk since 1959, and in 1962 he graduated from the 3rd year of the Pedagogical Institute in absentia. He “split” out of his own stupidity, believing that after the amnesty of 1956 he would not face responsibility for serving the Germans. Before the war, Zhirukhin worked in the fire department, then he was mobilized and from 1940 to 1942. served as a clerk at the garrison guardhouse in Novorossiysk, and during the offensive of the German troops he defected to the Nazis. Andrey Sukhov, formerly a veterinary paramedic. In 1943, he fell behind the Germans in the Tsimlyansk region. He was detained by the Red Army soldiers, but Sukhov was sent to a penal battalion, then he was reinstated to the rank of senior lieutenant of the Red Army, reached Berlin and after the war lived calmly, as a WWII veteran, worked in the paramilitary guards in Rostov-on-Don.
After the war, Alexander Veykh worked in the Kemerovo region in the timber industry as a sawmill operator. A neat and disciplined worker was even elected to the local committee. But one thing surprised his colleagues and fellow villagers - for eighteen years he had never left the village. Valerian Surguladze was arrested right on his own wedding day. A graduate of a sabotage school, a fighter of Sonderkommando 10-a and SD platoon commander, Surguladze was responsible for the deaths of many Soviet citizens.
Nikolai Psarev entered the service of the Germans in Taganrog - on his own, voluntarily. At first he was an orderly for a German officer, then he ended up in the Sonderkommando. In love with the German army, he did not even want to repent of the crimes he had committed when he, working as a foreman for a construction trust in Chimkent, was arrested twenty years after that terrible war. Emelyan Buglak was arrested in Krasnodar, where he settled after many years of wandering around the country, considering that there was nothing to be afraid of. Uruzbek Dzampaev, who sold hazelnuts, was the most restless among all the detained policemen and, as it seemed to the investigators, he even reacted with some relief to his own arrest. On October 24, 1963, all defendants in the Sonderkommando 10-a case were sentenced to death. Eighteen years after the war, the deserved punishment finally found the executioners, who personally killed thousands of Soviet citizens.
The Krasnodar trial of 1963 was far from the only example of the condemnation of Hitler’s executioners, even many years after the victory in the Great Patriotic War. In 1976, in Bryansk, one of the local residents accidentally identified a man passing by as the former head of the Lokot prison, Nikolai Ivanin. The policeman was arrested, and he, in turn, reported interesting information about a woman who had been hunted by security officers since the war - about Antonina Makarova, better known as “Tonka the Machine Gunner.”
A former nurse of the Red Army, “Tonka the Machine Gunner” was captured, then escaped, wandered through the villages, and then finally went to serve the Germans. She is responsible for at least 1,500 lives of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians. When the Red Army captured Konigsberg in 1945, Antonina posed as a Soviet nurse, got a job in a field hospital, where she met soldier Viktor Ginzburg and soon married him, changing her last name. After the war, the Ginzburgs settled in the Belarusian city of Lepel, where Antonina got a job at a garment factory as a product quality controller.
Antonina Ginzburg's real surname - Makarova - became known only in 1976, when her brother, who lived in Tyumen, filled out a form to travel abroad and indicated his sister's surname - Ginzburg, nee Makarova. The state security agencies of the USSR became interested in this fact. The surveillance of Antonina Ginzburg continued for more than a year. It was only in September 1978 that she was arrested. On November 20, 1978, Antonina Makarova was sentenced by the court to capital punishment and was shot on August 11, 1979. The death sentence against Antonina Makarova was one of three death sentences against women handed down in the Soviet Union in the post-Stalin era.
Years and decades passed, and security agencies continued to identify the executioners responsible for the deaths of Soviet citizens. The work of identifying Nazi henchmen required maximum care: after all, an innocent person could fall under the “flywheel” of the state punitive machine. Therefore, in order to eliminate all possible mistakes, each potential candidate suspect was observed for a very long time before the decision to detain was made.
The KGB kept Antonin Makarov under investigation for more than a year. First, they set up a meeting for her with a disguised KGB officer, who started talking about the war, about where Antonina served. But the woman did not remember the names of the military units and the names of the commanders. Then, one of the witnesses to her crimes was brought to the factory where “Tonka the Machine Gunner” worked, and she, watching from the window, was able to identify Makarova. But even this identification was not enough for the investigators. Then they brought two more witnesses. Makarova was summoned to the security office, allegedly to recalculate her pension. One of the witnesses sat in front of the social security office and identified the criminal, the second, playing the role of a social security worker, also unequivocally stated that in front of her was “Tonka the Machine Gunner” herself.
In the mid-1970s. The first trials of the policemen guilty of the destruction of Khatyn took place. Judge of the Military Tribunal of the Belarusian Military District Viktor Glazkov learned the name of the main participant in the atrocities - Grigory Vasyura. A man with that last name lived in Kyiv and worked as deputy director of a state farm. Vasyura was placed under surveillance. A respectable Soviet citizen posed as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. However, investigators found witnesses to Vasyura’s crimes. The former Nazi punisher was arrested. No matter how he denied it, they managed to prove the guilt of 72-year-old Vasyura. At the end of 1986, he was sentenced to death and soon executed - forty-one years after the Great Patriotic War.
Back in 1974, almost thirty years after the Great Victory, a group of tourists from the United States of America arrived in Crimea. 
Among them was American citizen Fedor Fedorenko (pictured). Security authorities became interested in his personality. It was possible to find out that during the war, Fedorenko served as a guard in the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. But there were many guards in the camp, and not all of them took personal part in the murders and torture of Soviet citizens. Therefore, Fedorenko’s personality began to be studied in more detail. It turned out that he not only guarded prisoners, but also killed and tortured Soviet people. Fedorenko was arrested and extradited to the Soviet Union. In 1987, Fyodor Fedorenko was shot, although at that time he was already 80 years old.
Now the last veterans of the Great Patriotic War, already very elderly people, are passing away - and those who, in their childhood, had the terrible ordeal of being victims of Nazi war crimes. Of course, the policemen themselves are very old - the youngest of them are the same age as the youngest veterans. But even such a respectable age should not be a guarantee against prosecution.
- Mikhail Petrovich, how did the search for former punishers begin?
In the early 60s, on business, I went to the Moglino railway station, near Pskov. And by chance I saw a monument there, completely different from those obelisks that are installed at military graves. They explained to me that here lie civilians who were shot as hostages by punitive forces during the war. Mass executions also took place near the neighboring village of Gloty. The firing squads consisted of members of the 37th Estonian police battalion. The punitive forces were commanded by Alexander Pigli. It turned out that not a single punisher was punished after the war. As it turned out later, they lived in Estonia, almost all under their own names. The management of the department, having listened to my arguments, allowed us to begin the search for the criminals.
- What document proving the guilt of specific people was the first to come into your hands?
During the liberation of Tallinn, our troops seized the file cabinet of the Estonian security service. It contained 1,548 names. All that remained was to identify the people who served in Pskov. Here, at Lenin Street 3, the Estonian security police were located, and prisoners were kept and interrogated in its basements. I traveled throughout the region, visited places where the punitive forces committed atrocities, and met with eyewitnesses. They all talked about the special cruelty of the soldiers of the 37th Estonian battalion. The first person I called to the department for questioning (as a suspect for now) was a former private of the 37th battalion named Okhvril. He did not deny his participation in punitive actions, but claimed that he always shot only in the air. And that he was forced into the service of the Germans, through mobilization.
- Was it really like that?
Everyone served the occupiers of their own free will. For this, after the victory over the Soviet Union, a reward was promised - three hectares of land. And therefore, when entering military service, some volunteers attributed years to themselves because they were minors at that time. This helped them subsequently avoid capital punishment following a court verdict in 1973. Okhvril was among these “lucky ones,” although, as the investigation established, he did not shoot in the air, but at living targets. It also became known that Alexander Pigli, back in 1941, when the Germans arrived, participated in the executions of party and economic activists in Soviet Estonia. I soon found out where the former executioners from the firing squad lived and what they did. But a man named Pigli was not on this list. I couldn’t know then that he changed his last name in 1945.
- But Pigli could have stayed abroad after the war.
Of course he could. But I knew for sure that the 20th Estonian SS Division, which included the 37th Battalion in 1944, was disarmed by Czech partisans in 1945. I found a man named Tang, a close friend and colleague of Alexander Pigli, and he admitted that he last saw his commander in Czechoslovakia in civilian clothes and under a false name. But he couldn’t tell her, he said that Pigli didn’t name her. Then the Czechs handed the Estonians over to the Soviet command, and each of them underwent strict testing in a filtration camp. The war criminals were awaiting trial, and the rest, whose guilt had not been proven, were sent to work in Vorkuta. Pigli, having taken someone else's last name, probably passed the test successfully. He did not stay in the north for long, because in 1946 the Estonian government asked Moscow to return his compatriots to their homeland to restore the economy, although it had suffered almost no damage during the war. It could very well be that Pigli, confident in his invulnerability, returned home with everyone else. But I didn’t know where it could be or what it looked like almost 30 years later. True, the former punitive commander had one expressive feature: excessively protruding ears and fiery red hair.
-And who gave you the right clue?
Tang. I didn’t believe that with such a close relationship with Pigli, he couldn’t know his friend’s new surname. I again summoned him for questioning in Pskov. Tang stubbornly declared that he knew nothing. We had to keep him with us and give him time to think. Soon Tang asked to meet with me. He admitted that he only remembered the first syllable of Pigli’s new surname; it sounds like “Ran.” Later I found another person who knew that Pigli had changed his last name, but he also could not give it in full. But only the ending is “oya”. Based on the lists of the filtration camp in Czechoslovakia, it was possible to establish that in 1945 an Estonian soldier named Randoja was tested there. Under this surname, in the countryside near the city of Kohtla-Jarve, the war criminal Alexander Pigli lived. He worked as a cattleman, was listed as a shock worker of communist labor, his portrait hung on the district honor board, in addition, this man was a deputy of the village council.
- How did you see the person you had been looking for for 12 years?
I had only seen him in war photographs, where Pigli was depicted in a dapper German officer's uniform. But I recognized him at first glance; his wide-spread ears and fiery red hair escaping from under his winter hat immediately caught my eye.
In total, Mikhail Pushnyakov tracked down 13 state criminals who suffered a well-deserved punishment.