The search for traitors after the Second World War. The traitors who caused the most damage during WWII
"Religion is worst enemy Soviet patriotism... History does not confirm the merits of the church in the development of genuine patriotism.”
Magazine "Godless" June 1941
By the beginning of World War II, there was not a single functioning Orthodox church in 25 regions of the RSFSR, and no more than 5 churches functioned in 20 regions. In Ukraine, there was not a single functioning church in the Vinnitsa, Donetsk, Kirovograd, Nikolaev, Sumy, Khmelnytsky regions; one each operated in Lugansk, Poltava and Kharkov.26 According to the NKVD, by 1941 there were 3,021 Orthodox churches in the country, of which almost 3,000 were located in the territories of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, which ceded to the USSR in 1939-1940, Poland and Finland
The membership of the Union of Militant Atheists in 1932 reached 5 million people. It was planned to increase the number of its members to 22 million by 1938. 28 The circulation of anti-religious publications reached 140 million copies by the beginning of the war.
Many myths are associated with the date of the German attack on the USSR, which have become especially widespread in the church environment. According to one of the most famous, the date of June 22 was allegedly chosen by Hitler in accordance with astrological forecasts. This legend is also repelled by those who are not averse to presenting the events of June 1941 as a campaign of "pagan Germany" against " Orthodox Russia".. However, the German General Staff, when choosing the day and time of the strike on the USSR, was guided by considerations of a different plan ...
Usually the night from Saturday to Sunday was the most "undisciplined" in the Red Army. AT military units baths were arranged, followed by copious libations; command staff on Sunday night, as a rule, was absent being with their families; for the rank and file, this night has always been the most suitable for "self-driving". It was this, quite earthly calculation (and not at all the "whisper of the stars") that guided the Nazi command when choosing several dates for the attack on the USSR. The events of the first day of the war brilliantly showed the validity of this calculation.
Having received the news of the beginning of the war, the guardian of the patriarchal throne, Met. Sergius (Stragorodsky), as modern church historians say, released his
"Message to the Shepherds and Flocks of Christ's Orthodox Church". The fact of his appearance
22.6.1941 still disputed
The message said: “The fascist robbers have attacked our Motherland... The pitiful descendants of the enemies of Orthodox Christianity want to once again try to bring our people to their knees before untruth... But this is not the first time the Russian people have to endure such trials. With God's help, this time too, he will scatter the fascist enemy force into dust... The Church of Christ blesses all Orthodox to defend the sacred borders of our Motherland.”37 The message also contained a hidden reproach to the authorities, who asserted that there would be no war. At the Metropolitan Sergius, this place is expressed as follows: “... we, the inhabitants of Russia, hoped that the conflagration of war, which had engulfed almost the entire globe, would not reach us ...” ... Sergius has already called the “sly considerations” about the “possible benefits” on the other side of the front nothing more than a direct betrayal of the Motherland. 39 However, the effectiveness of such rhetoric inexorably turned into dust as the German armies rapidly advanced to the east ...
In the history of wars, it is impossible to find an analogue of such an initially loyal attitude towards the aggressor, which was demonstrated by the population of the regions of the USSR occupied by the Germans. And the fact that so many Russians were ready to go over to the Germans in advance looks incredible to many. But that's exactly what happened. Examples of an initially hostile attitude towards the expulsion of the Bolsheviks were the exception rather than the general rule. German filmmakers did not need to resort to artificial scenery in order to capture on film examples of the Soviet population meeting German troops with bread and salt and throwing flowers on German tanks. These shots are the clearest evidence of such an abnormal perception of an alien invasion ...
Is it any wonder that the Russian emigration took the German attack on the USSR with no less enthusiasm. For many Russian exiles, there was a real hope of an early "liberation" of the Motherland. Moreover, such hopes were met regardless of church jurisdiction (and not only in ROCOR - as Soviet historiography tried to present it). The German invasion of the USSR was welcomed by the Parisian ROCOR hierarch, Met. Seraphim (Lukyanov), who later transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate. In his address on the occasion of the German attack, he declared: “May the Almighty bless the great Leader of the German people, who raised the sword against the enemies of God himself ... May the Masonic star, hammer and sickle disappear from the face of the earth.” 45 He accepted June 22, 1941 with no less joy. Archimandrite John (Shakhovskoy, future Archbishop of San Francisco), who then belonged to the “Evlogian” jurisdiction: “The bloody operation to overthrow the Third International is entrusted to a skillful German surgeon, experienced in science.”46 And even the cleric of the Moscow Patriarchate, Fr. Georgy Benigsen recalls the beginning of the war in Riga: “There is hidden joy on all faces ...”.47
. V. Tsypin: “In all the cities and in many villages left by the Soviet administration, priests were announced, either in the position of exiles, or hiding underground, or earning a living by some craft or service. These priests received permission from the occupying commandants to hold divine services in closed rooms.”41 Another eyewitness (psalmist of the Nikolo-Konets parish of the Gdov district of the Pskov region S. D. Pleskach) noted the following: “The Russian people completely changed as soon as the Germans appeared. Ruined temples were erected, church utensils were made, vestments were delivered from where they were preserved, and temples were built and repaired a lot. Everywhere was painted... When everything was ready, then a priest was invited and the church was consecrated. At that time, there were such joyful events that I cannot describe.”42 Such feelings were characteristic of the population of the most diverse regions of the occupied territory. Journalist V. D. Samarin describes the German occupation in Orel as follows: “A religious feeling, hidden deep under the Bolsheviks, woke up, surfaced to the surface of the soul. Prayers filled the churches, miraculous icons were carried around the villages. They prayed like they hadn't prayed for a long time."
Adolf Hitler and Orthodox emigration
“... if the government of the German Reich wishes
to involve Russian Orthodox Churches in cooperation
in the fight against the communist godless movement...,
then the government of the Reich will find from our side
full consent and support.
Met. Evlogii (Georgievsky), October 1937
It is noteworthy that the first contacts of the Russian emigration with Hitler date back to the early 1920s.4 The mediator in these contacts was Alfred Rosenberg. Born in the Russian Empire, studied at Kiev University and served in the Russian army during World War I, Rosenberg spoke Russian better than German. Surrounded by Hitler, he found fame as the best specialist in Russia and the "Russian soul", and it was he who was entrusted with the development of racial theory in Nazi ideology. It is possible that it was he who convinced Hitler of the expediency of friendly relations with the Russian Orthodox Church in Germany. So, in 1938, the Nazis built the Orthodox Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin and financed the overhaul of 19 Orthodox churches from the imperial treasury.
In addition, by Hitler's decree of February 25, 1938, the Russian parishes subordinate to Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) were transferred under the jurisdiction of the German Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (hereinafter referred to as ROCOR).5 Prof. cited here. Pospelovsky is inclined to dramatize this event somewhat, exposing it as one of the cornerstones of the church-emigre schism. However, it must be taken into account that the confrontation between the Karlovtsy Synod and Met. Evlogiem began long before Hitler came to power and was nevertheless church-administrative, and not theological and not political in nature. It would also be fair to note that only 6% of Russian emigrant parishes were under the jurisdiction of Met. Evlogiya, and the remaining 94% were subordinate to the Synod Abroad.6 Even based on elementary arithmetical logic, it would hardly be fair to speak of “schismatic aspirations of the Karlovtsy”.
Hitler was probably guided by the same logic when he wished to “centralize” the Orthodox parishes on the territory of the Reich, and therefore subordinated the Eulogian “minority” to the synodal “majority” (it would be strange if he did the opposite. In the story of the Evlogian parishes, Hitler was driven by the idea to centralize everything to facilitate control over religious organizations.7 To achieve this goal, he created the Reich Ministry of Religious Cults, granted the German Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church the state status of a “corporation of public law” (which only Lutherans and Catholics had) and transferred 13 Evlogian parishes under the jurisdiction of the German Diocese.
As for the construction of an Orthodox cathedral by the Nazis and the overhaul of 19 churches, this beneficence is also associated thank you letter Hitler, signed by the then First Hierarch of ROCOR, Metropolitan Anastassy (Gribanovsky).
Hitler acted as a "builder and trustee" of churches, and the expression of gratitude by the primate of the Church for such a beneficence is a completely normal and natural phenomenon for traitors. It is impossible not to take into account the fact that in the pre-war 1938, Hitler was personified as a man who honestly won the elections and headed a government recognized by all countries of the world.
As noted above, Hitler was perceived by the Russian emigration as a counterbalance to godless Bolshevism. As early as 1921, the Supreme Monarchist Council was negotiating with Hitler about possible assistance in the event of his coming to power in preparing the clergy for Russia liberated from the Bolsheviks.9 Unlike the leaders of Western democracies, Hitler did not allow himself the expression "Russian communism", preferring another the term is Judeo-Bolshevism. Such terminology suited the Russian emigration quite well and did not hurt the ear. The Russophobic passages in Mein Kampf were little known, and it is not surprising that even the most notorious Russophiles like I. A. Ilyin urged the Russian emigration "not to look at National Socialism through Jewish eyes."
It would be fair to assume that Hitler's pro-Orthodox gestures were of a diplomatic and propagandistic nature. Such gestures could win sympathy in the countries of potential allies, in countries with a predominantly Orthodox faith (Romania, Bulgaria, Greece). On September 1, 1939, the German Wehrmacht broke into the Polish border. II World War started...
Despite the fact that Hitler acted as an outright aggressor, his attack on Poland did not seriously affect the perception of him by the Russian emigration. This circumstance allowed the Nazis to make another pro-Orthodox gesture after the occupation of Poland. A general return to the Orthodox, parishes taken from them, began. As the journal Church Life wrote, “... the Orthodox population is met with a benevolent attitude from the German authorities, who, at the first request of the population, return to them the church property taken by the Poles.”13 In addition, with the support of the German authorities, an Orthodox theological institute was opened in Wroclaw .
Church policy of the Nazis in the occupied regions of the USSR
“Orthodoxy is a colorful ethnographic ritual”
(Reich Minister Rosenberg).
The areas occupied by the Germans (almost half of the European part of the USSR) were subjected to territorial division into Reichskommissariats, which consisted of districts, regions, districts, districts and volosts. The front-line territory was under the control of the Wehrmacht. Northern Bukovina, Moldova, Bessarabia and the Odessa region were transferred to Romania. Galicia was annexed to the Polish General Government. The rest of the territory was the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine" (with the center in Rivne). The central part of Belarus formed the General Commissariat of Belarus. The north-west of the Brest and Grodno regions went to East Prussia (all-German laws were in force here). Most of the Brest, as well as the Pinsk and Polesye regions, went to the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine", and the north-west of the Vilna region - to the general district of Lithuania. The general district of Belarus itself was part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland.51
The national question, according to the Nazi ideologist Rosenberg, was “to reasonably and purposefully support the desire for freedom of all these peoples ... to separate from the vast territory Soviet Union state formations (republics) and organize them against Moscow in order to liberate the German Reich for the coming centuries from the Eastern nightmare.”52
As for the religious policy of the Germans in the occupied lands, it can hardly be characterized unambiguously. Several mutually exclusive approaches dominated here, but the most common were two ...
The position of Reich Minister of the Eastern Lands Alfred Rosenberg can be formulated something like this: “The way of life of the Russian people has been shaped for centuries under the influence of Orthodoxy. The Bolshevik clique deprived the Russian people of this pivot and turned them into an unbelieving, unruly herd. For centuries Russians have been drummed from ambos that "all power is from God." royal power, having failed to provide her subjects with a decent standard of living, she was able, with the help of the Church, to form in the people the consciousness that deprivation, suffering and oppression benefit the soul. Such a sermon ensured the rulers the servile obedience of the people. This point was completely ignored by the Bolsheviks, and it would be foolish of us to repeat their mistake. Therefore, it is in our own interests to revive these Orthodox postulates in the minds of the people, if we want to keep them in check. It is much better if autonomous and unaccountable church structures are created in the Eastern lands in order to exclude the possibility of the emergence of a single powerful church organization.
Such was the position of Rosenberg, which determined the attitude of the Nazis towards the Russian Orthodox Church and which was guided to one degree or another by Nazi officials. Its main provisions were outlined in a letter from Rosenberg to the Reichskommissars of Ostland and Ukraine dated May 13, 1942. They can be formulated as follows: Religious groups should not engage in politics. They should be divided according to national and territorial features. Nationality must be especially strictly observed in the selection of leaders of religious groups. Territorially, religious associations should not go beyond the boundaries of one diocese. Religious societies should not interfere with the activities of the occupying authorities.53
The church policy of the Wehrmacht can be characterized as the absence of any policy towards the Church. Their own code of conduct, loyalty to old traditions contributed to the spread among the German military of a steady antipathy towards manifestations of Nazi fanaticism and racial schizophrenia. Only this can explain the fact that front-line generals and officers turned a blind eye to directives and instructions from Berlin, if they were based on the theory of "untermensch". A lot of evidence and documents have been preserved not only about the warm welcome of the German army by the Russian population, but also about the “non-Nazi” attitude of German soldiers towards the population of the regions of the USSR they occupied. In particular, documents have been preserved on orders to German soldiers to remember that they are not in the occupied territories, but on the land of an ally.54 Quite often, soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht showed sincere friendliness and sympathy for the people, who suffered for two decades under the rule of the Bolsheviks. In the ecclesiastical question, such an attitude resulted in all-round support for the restoration of church life.
The military not only willingly supported the initiatives of the local population to open parishes, but also provided various assistance in the form of funds and building materials for the restoration of destroyed churches. A lot of evidence has also been preserved that the German military themselves took the initiative to open churches in the territories under their control and even ordered them to do so.55 So, for example, in the memorandum of Z. V. Syromyatnikova "On the stay in the territory of the Kharkov region occupied by German troops from December 15 to December 22, 1941" it was noted: “The German command pays special attention to the work of churches. In a number of villages where the churches were not destroyed, they are already working... In the villages where they were destroyed, the order was given to the elders to immediately find premises and open churches.”56
Sometimes the initiative of the Germans took anecdotal forms. The same fund also contains a certificate from the representative of the Sebezh commandant’s office dated 10/8/1941: “This is real in that the German authorities, which liberated the peasantry from the Bolsheviks, are raising the question of opening a service in the Livskaya Church, and therefore I personally authorize you, Rybakov Yakov Matveyevich, in the absence of a priest - to take the place of a priest and perform a church rite. Request: there can be no refusals, in which a real certificate was issued signed by the representative of the German authorities Engelhard "... To which Rybakov replies:" I can’t be a priest, because I didn’t receive a blessing from the bishop, moreover, according to the Christian According to the law, bigamists cannot be priests, but I am a bigamist”...57
It should be noted that the assistance of the German army in the restoration of Russian Orthodox churches has always been based on the principles of "Christian humanism". The commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, himself took part in the Orthodox service in Borisov with German officers.
The above characteristics and examples quite clearly reflect all the diversity of church life in the territories of the USSR occupied by the Germans, for it becomes quite obvious that the scope and nature of the “religious revival” largely depended on the local characteristics of the occupation administration (NSDAP and the SS or the Wehrmacht). Therefore, it is advisable to consider the position of the ROC in the territories occupied by the Germans not by periods of war, but by regions and regions.
The position of the Church in the Baltics
“They didn’t cheat.
They coped with the NKVD, and it is not difficult to deceive these sausage makers.
Metropolitan Vilensky and Lithuanian Sergius (Voskresensky).
At the time of the arrival of the German army in the Baltic countries, Met. Sergius (Voskresensky). He held this post from January 1941. Before the flight of the Bolsheviks from Riga, Met. Sergius was ordered to evacuate. Contrary to the order, he took refuge in the crypt of the Riga Cathedral.
Sergius in the world Dimitry Voskresensky, was born in Moscow in 1898 in the family of a Moscow priest and before the revolution he studied at the seminary, which he did not have time to finish. At the beginning of the revolution, he was a novice in the Danilov Monastery. In the same place, he took monasticism with the name Sergius. Researchers who talked with people who knew personally note that in the 1920s he was a religious monk, who, nevertheless, loved life and secular pleasures, liked to drink and spend time among young people, for which he was repeatedly penalized. Since 1926, he became an employee of the office of the Moscow Patriarchate. Probably, in the 30s, Bishop Sergius closely collaborated with Metropolitan. Sergius (Stragorodsky), which influenced the further career of the young bishop.63
With the arrival of the Germans in the Baltic States (the Wehrmacht entered Riga on June 30), Met. Sergius tried to find a common language with the new government. With his diplomacy, success was assured to him in advance. He knew how to present himself in the right light. He soon established himself well as a fierce anti-communist. With the help of luxurious banquets and generous gifts, Met. Sergius acquired the necessary acquaintances with party functionaries and the highest ranks of the SS. The metropolitan's comfortable house and personal fleet made an impression on the Germans.
Unlike other Soviet territories under German occupation, in the Baltics, the territory of the Russian Orthodox Church expanded and the power of its exarch strengthened, despite the fact that tendencies towards autocephaly were openly manifested in Estonia and Latvia. Immediately after the withdrawal of the Soviets from the Baltics, the Metropolitans of Latvia and Estonia tried to restore their lost independence from Moscow. 20.7.1941 Metropolitan Riga Augustin (Peterson) made a request German authorities with a request to restore the Latvian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. A similar request, but on behalf of the Estonian Orthodox Church, was made by Met. Tallinn Alexander (Paulus). It seemed that a church schism was inevitable. But on September 12, 1941, Met. Sergius (Voskresensky) turned to the German authorities with a memorandum in which he explained all the undesirability for Berlin to allow the Church in Latvia and Estonia to submit to the Patriarch of Constantinople, whose Western European exarch lived in London and had close relations with the British government. Vladyka Sergius managed to prove to the Germans the advantages of the canonical subjugation of the Baltic states. In other words, he proposed to leave the Baltic states under the control of the Russian Orthodox Church, and him as its exarch.
In fact, Sergius got permission from Berlin. As a result, the split in the Baltic did not take place, and some "autocephalists", not without the participation of Sergius, even had to deal with the Gestapo. The Germans are tired of enduring the ambitious statements of the supporters of autocephaly, who demanded the expulsion from Latvia of the "Bolshevik protege", an agent of the Cheka, Exarch Metr. Sergius.64 In Latvia, the split ended in November 1941, when the Gestapo demanded that Met. Augustine of the immediate termination of the activities of his Synod.65
As for his relations with Moscow, the Germans at first advocated breaking them off. However, Mr. Sergius managed to convince Berlin that the Russian Orthodox Church never reconciled with the Soviet government, submitting to it only outwardly. The exarch also proved to the Germans that their interference in the administration of the Church (such as breaking canonical ties with Moscow) could be used by the Soviets for anti-German propaganda.
All these negotiations led to the fact that when in 1942 Met. Estonian Alexander broke with Sergius, while another Estonian bishop (Paul of Narva) remained faithful to him, the Germans decided that the metropolitans Alexander and Augustine should be called respectively the metropolitans of Revel and Riga, and not Estonian and Latvian, because. the metropolitan of all three Baltic states is Sergius (Voskresensky).66 Instructions sent to fascist officials stated that, although parishes in Estonia could be included both in the Estonian diocese of Met. Alexander, and to the Russian diocese, ep. Paul, the German command prefers that as many parishes as possible enter the Russian diocese. It should be noted that most of the parishes in the Baltic States remained under the control of Met. Sergius. This is partly due to the fact that the flock did not want to break off relations with the Russian Church, and partly to the fact that everyone saw which side the Germans were on.
Finally, the German policy towards the Russian Orthodox Church in the Baltics was formulated at a meeting in the Reichsministry of the Eastern Lands on 20.6.1942. The essence of the outcome of the meeting was approximately as follows:
1. The occupying authorities consider it beneficial for themselves to unite all Orthodox around the Moscow exarch with the aim of evicting them after the war to the Reichskommissariat "Moscow".
2. For the German leadership, it is not so important to whom the exarch in the Baltics is nominally subordinate - Moscow or Constantinople, especially since the stay of the exarch of the Patriarch of Constantinople in London really cannot be pleasant.
3. Such a policy enables the occupying authorities to emphasize their religious tolerance and use the completely anti-communist speeches of Exarch Sergius for propaganda purposes.67
One can only guess about the pressure that Met. Sergius (Stragorodsky) from the side of the Soviet authorities, demanding from him the condemnation of their Baltic exarch. In the end, the Bolsheviks achieved their goal, and on September 22, 1942, Metropolitan. Sergius (Stragorodsky) sent a message that said: “... For the sake of the good of the motherland, the people do not count their victims and shed blood and give their very life... But in Riga in early August, our Orthodox bishops appeared ... at the head with Sergius Voskresensky sent from Moscow, who “did not want to suffer with the people of God,” but preferred “to have the sweetness of sin temporarily” (Heb. 11:25), to live happily, eating from grains from the fascist table ... Hair stand on end when reading about the torture of women, children and the wounded by the Nazis. And Metropolitan Sergius Voskresensky with his “companions”-bishops telegraph Hitler that they “admire the ongoing (Hitler) heroic struggle” (against the defenseless?!) and “pray to the Almighty, may He bless the (fascist) weapons with a speedy and complete victory ... 68 This message did not cause resentment among the exarch of the Baltics, and when the Bishops' Council of 1943 excommunicated all the clerics who had shown themselves to be collaborators from the Church, and Metropolitan was named among them. Sergius (Voskresensky), the latter, published an article in the Baltic newspapers entitled “Stalin is not Saul, he will not become Paul,” in which he ridiculed the illusory hopes for peace between the Communists and the Church,69 but still did not break with Moscow. It is noteworthy that the Germans also demanded this break from him, when Met. Sergius (Stragorodsky) became Patriarch, but Bishop Sergius convinced them of the illogicality of such a demand, explaining that the Bolsheviks would be able to use the resulting church schism in anti-German propaganda - playing on the intervention of the occupying authorities in internal church affairs.
In fact, the only thing that was not possible for Met. To achieve Sergius from Berlin, this is permission for the canonical subordination of Belarus to itself. Rosenberg had his own ideas about this.
But despite the "failure" of Met. Sergius with Belarus, it will not be a mistake to call him the most active hierarch of the Russian Church who collaborated with the Nazis in the occupied territory of the USSR. “In addition to rebuilding the church organization and defending the interests of the Church on the territory of his exarchate, Met. Sergius made a lot of efforts for the spiritual nourishment of the Orthodox flock in the northwestern regions of the USSR captured by the Nazis. What is worth only one Pskov Mission (which will be discussed in the corresponding chapter). All this activity could not arouse the approval of the Soviet authorities.
People who dare to do this, quite rightly, were listed by her in the category of enemies of the people and accomplices of the Nazis. The punishing sword of Soviet justice, according to Stalin's plan, was to serve here as partisan detachments operating in the occupied territory. It was to them that the call of the Soviet leader was addressed “to create unbearable conditions for the enemy and all his accomplices, to persecute and destroy them at every turn ...”.70 Met. Sergius (Voskresensky) was one of these accomplices. According to the recollections of people who knew him closely, he seriously feared for his safety...
On April 28, 1944, on the way from Vilnius to Kaunas, Exarch Sergius and those accompanying him were liquidated by unknown persons. According to indications local residents, the attackers were dressed in German military uniform. The Germans said that the murder of the metropolitan was organized by Soviet partisans. Soviet propaganda attributed the murder to the Nazis.
Riga priest Fr. Nikolai Trubetskoy, who served 10 years for participating in the Pskov Mission, claims to have met a man in the camp, allegedly a former Soviet partisan, who told him that he participated in the murder of the metropolitan, committed by order of Soviet intelligence.71
On the dubiousness of the version of the murder of Met. Sergius speaks to the Germans also from the fact that none of the modern church historians could coherently argue the logic according to which it would be beneficial for the Germans to get rid of Met. Sergius.
The position of the Church in Belarus
Belarus was one of the first regions to be occupied as a result of the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht to the East, and at the same time it was for the Germans a clear example of the results Soviet rule. As the historian of the Belarusian Church wrote, ep. Athanasius (Martos), “German troops found church and religious life in Eastern Belarus in a ruined state. There were no bishops and priests, churches were closed, converted into warehouses, theaters, and many were destroyed. There were no monasteries, the monks dispersed.”
Belarus, together with the Baltic States, was part of one Reichskommissariat (Ostland), due to the fact that the exarch of the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, Met. Nikolai (Yarushevich) did not betray his homeland and preferred to remain on Soviet territory, Belarus and Ukraine found themselves without a ruling bishop.
Literally from the very beginning of the occupation, in the church life of Belarus there was a confrontation between supporters of submission to Moscow and those who preferred autocephaly. Encouraging Belarusian nationalism, the Nazis sought to create a national autocephalous Church, relying here on Belarusian nationalists who came here from the Czech Republic and Poland.
The essence of the Nazi religious policy in Belarus was reduced to seven points:
1. Organize Orthodox Church independently, without any relations with Moscow, or Warsaw, or Berlin.
2. The Church must bear the name "Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox National Church".
3. The church is governed by its sv. canons, and the German government does not interfere in its internal life.
4. Sermon, teaching of the Law of God, Church administration must be carried out in the Belarusian language.
5. The appointment of bishops must be made with the knowledge of the German authorities.
6. The statute of the “Belarusian Orthodox Autocephalous National Church” must be presented to the German authorities.
7. Services must be celebrated in Church Slavonic.74
in March 1942, the Council of Belarusian Bishops elected Archbishop Panteleimon (Rozhnovsky). By the time the Council was held, the Belarusian Church already included 6 dioceses:
1. Minsk - led by Met. Panteleimon (Rozhnovsky).
2. Grodno-Bialystok (located outside the Reichskommissariat "Ostland" and therefore received the status of an exarchate) - led by the archbishop. Venedikt (Bobkovsky), who received the rights of the exarch of East Prussia.
3. Mogilev - with Bishop Filofei (Narko).
4. Vitebsk - with bishop. Athanasius (Martos).
5. Smolensk-Bryansk - with bishop. Stefan (Sevbo).
6. Baranovichsko-Novgorodskaya.75
The refusal to declare the autocephaly of the Belarusian Church could not please the Belarusian nationalists. That is why they made every effort to remove Metr. Panteleimon from the management of the Church - efforts that ultimately succeeded. At the insistence of the nationalists, the Nazis handed over the management of the Church to his closest assistant, Archbishop. Filofei (Narko). Filofey also wrote in his letter to the Reichskommissar "Ostland" H. Lohse dated 30.7.1942: "This is a very important and responsible position, requiring the accuracy and correctness of the church canon of the sacred universal Orthodox Church..." 77
Ultimately, on August 30, 1942, the so-called. All-Belarusian Orthodox Church Council. The initiators of its convocation were supporters of autocephaly. The result of four days of work of the council was the development of the statute of the Belarusian Church and the approval of measures to achieve autocephaly. A telegram was sent to Hitler: “The First All-Belarusian Church Council in Minsk, on behalf of the Orthodox Belarusians, sends you, Mr. Reich Chancellor, heartfelt gratitude for the liberation of Belarus from the Moscow-Bolshevik godless yoke, for the opportunity to freely organize our religious life in the form of the Holy Belarusian Orthodox Autocephalous Church and wishes a speedy complete victory to your invincible weapon. 79 Messages to the heads of other Churches were handed over to the Nazis only a year later.
In May 1944, the Council of Belarusian Bishops issued a resolution calling Bolshevism a "satanic offspring" and a "son of the devil"81,
When the Belarusian bishops (led by Metropolitan Panteleimon) fled to Germany, they all joined ROCOR, which once again confirms their "pro-Russian position".
Although Rosenberg demanded from Gauleiter Lohse that the Russian Church, observing moderation, not extend its influence to the Orthodox Belarusians, it was not so easy for the latter to fulfill such a directive. In its reports, the SD was forced to state the absence of autocephalous priests.82 In addition, in the western regions of Belarus, where the position of Catholicism was strong, the Germans were inclined to support the Orthodox, seeing the Polish “fifth column” in the Catholic population.
One of the distinguishing features of the German occupation in Belarus was the particularly widespread inhuman treatment of the civilian population by the invaders. Mass round-ups, arrests, punitive raids by the SS could not arouse tender feelings among the local residents towards the creators of the “new order”.
Probably, this explains the fact of cooperation of about a dozen Belarusian clergy with the Soviet underground and the NKVD. Sometimes such clergymen had to pay for it not only own life but also the lives of their parishioners. So, for example, the priest Horostovo, Minsk diocese, Fr. John Loiko for active partisan work was burned by the SS in his own church, along with 300 parishioners. Miraculously escaped a similar fate and the priest Kuzma Raina, whose activities as a partisan informer was exposed by the Gestapo. Such behavior of the clergy (as, indeed, the behavior of the Germans) strikingly distinguished Belarus from other regions of the USSR occupied by the Germans.
.
In Belarus itself German occupation caused a "religious upsurge" everywhere. In Minsk alone, where by the arrival of the Germans there was not a single functioning church, after only 3-4 months, already 7 of them were opened and 22 thousand children were baptized. 120 churches were opened in the Minsk diocese. The occupying Nazi authorities opened pastoral courses, graduating 20-30 priests, deacons, and psalmists every few months.83 Similar pastoral courses were also opened in Vitebsk. In November 1942, the relics of St. Euphrosyne of Polotsk. In May 1944, the relics of the saint were transferred to Polotsk, where there were 4 churches and a monastery.84 In some regions of Belarus, for example, in Borisov, up to 75% of pre-revolutionary churches were restored (in Borisov itself, 21 churches). The process of "revival of church life" continued until the very retreat of the Germans from Belarus. So, in the report of the command of the Army Group "Center" for January-February 1944, it was said that 4 churches were reopened in the area of \u200b\u200bthe 4th Army, and in Bobruisk, for the first time during the Epiphany War, a religious procession took place on the river. Berezina with the participation of 5000 people.
Church in occupied Ukraine
After the defeat of the Third Reich, many women who had sexual relations with the Nazis were ostracized in Europe and the USSR. Their children, born of Germans, also had a hard time.
European democracies have especially succeeded in persecuting “German litters” and “German bastards,” writes Vladimir Ginda in the Archive section in No. 43 of the Correspondent magazine of November 2, 2012.
World War II ended in the spring of 1945 for the majority of the population of the victorious countries. But among the citizens of the victorious countries there were people who for a long time bore the burden of war. It's about about women seen in sexual relations with the Germans, as well as about children born from the invaders.
In the USSR, women who became entangled with the enemy were shot without further explanation or sent to camps. However, in European countries they were treated no better - they were killed, sentenced to prison terms or publicly humiliating punishments were imposed on them.
The fate of their German children in the USSR was not documented, but, apparently, for the most part they were no different from their peers. But in the West, the Germans sometimes had a hard time: in Norway, for example, they were forcibly imprisoned in homes for the mentally ill.
national disgrace
Most of all in Europe, the French distinguished themselves in the persecution of their compatriots who maintained intimate relations with enemies. Crushed by occupation and a large number collaborators, liberated France took out all her anger on fallen women. Among the people, based on the contemptuous nickname of the Germans - boches, they were called "bedding for boches."
Such women began to be persecuted during the war years, when the French Resistance waged an underground struggle against the invaders. Underground workers distributed leaflets among the population with the following text: “French women who give themselves to the Germans will be cut bald. We will write on your back - Sold to the Germans. When young French women sell their bodies to the Gestapo or the militia [collaborators], they are selling the blood and soul of their French compatriots. Future wives and mothers, they are obliged to maintain their purity in the name of love for the motherland.”
Most of all in Europe, the French distinguished themselves in the persecution of their compatriots who maintained intimate relations with enemies.
From words, the participants of the Resistance quickly moved on to deeds. According to historians, from 1943 to 1946, more than 20,000 women were shaved bald in the country for “horizontal collaborationism,” as the French derisively called sexual relations with the invaders.
Similar “lynchings” took place like this: armed underground workers broke into houses and pulled out guilty women by force, took them to city squares and cut their hair. The punishments and humiliations were all the stronger because they were carried out in public, in front of relatives, neighbors and acquaintances. The crowd laughed and applauded, after which the disgraced were led through the streets, sometimes even naked.
Shaving the head was essentially a mild form of punishment. Some of the “litters” had a swastika painted on their face with paint or even burned out the corresponding brand. And some of them had to endure brutal interrogations, accompanied by beatings, when details of their sex life were beaten out of women.
After a wave of harassment of “bosh mats,” most of these women were sentenced to prison. According to a government decree of August 26, 1944, approximately 18.5 thousand French women were recognized as “nationally unworthy” and received from six months to one year in prison, followed by a decrease in their rights for another year. People called this last year “the year of national shame”.
Some of the “litters” had a swastika painted on their faces or even branded accordingly.
Often, harlots were shot, and sometimes they themselves, unable to withstand the burden of ostracism, took their own lives.
The fate of the Norwegian "German whores" (tysketoser) was similar. After the war, more than 14,000 such people were counted in Norway, of which 5,000 were sentenced to a year and a half in prison. They were also publicly humiliated - undressed, smeared with sewage.
In the Netherlands, after May 5, 1945, about 500 “fritz girls” (moffenmaiden) were killed during street lynching. Other women found to have links with the occupiers were rounded up on the streets, undressed and doused with filth or kneeled in the mud, had their hair shaved or their heads painted orange.
In the USSR, there were no public trials of "German whores" like European ones. The Kremlin did not take dirty linen out of the hut - it acted with a proven method: arrest and deportation to Siberia. They did not look for a reason for a long time - the authorities considered all the inhabitants of the occupied territories as guilty a priori.
This position was clearly voiced on February 7, 1944, at a plenum of Soviet writers in Moscow by Ukrainian Petro Panch. “The entire population now in the liberated areas, in fact, cannot freely look into the eyes of our liberators, since they are to some extent entangled in ties with the Germans,” he said.
According to the writer, the inhabitants of the occupied territories either robbed apartments and institutions, or helped the Germans in robbery and executions, or speculated. And some girls, “having lost their sense of patriotism”, lived with the Germans.
The party leadership unequivocally recognized women who had sexual relations with the Nazis, prostitutes and traitors
The party leadership unequivocally recognized women who had sexual relations with the Nazis, prostitutes and traitors. So, by the circular of the NKVD of the USSR of February 18, 1942 On the organization of operational-Chekist work on liberated territory heads of regional and line management The NKVD was instructed to begin its work on the liberated lands with the arrests of previously identified henchmen and active accomplices of the Germans.
The document also listed a number of categories of the population subject to priority persecution. In particular, it was about women who married officers, soldiers and officials of the Wehrmacht, as well as about the owners of brothels and brothels.
Later, at the end of April 1943, in a joint order of the people's commissars of internal affairs, justice and the prosecutor of the USSR, an instruction was issued to more actively apply repressive sanctions against women caught in voluntary intimate or close domestic relations with Wehrmacht personnel or officials of German punitive and administrative bodies. Most often, such accomplices were punished by taking away their children.
But they could have been shot without trial or investigation, and literally immediately upon arrival Soviet power.
Most often, such accomplices were punished by taking away their children.
For example, in the report of the representative of the Hitlerite Ministry of Eastern Territories under the Army Group South, it was reported that in the sector Slavyansk - Barvenkovo - Kramatorsk - Konstantinovka (eastern Ukraine) in the spring of 1943, the very next day after the liberation of this area by the Red Army, representatives of the NKVD held mass arrests.
First of all, those who served in the German police, worked in the occupation administration or other services were detained. In addition, women who had sexual relations with the Germans, who were pregnant by the occupiers or had children from them, were killed on the spot along with the babies. In general, according to German documents, about 4 thousand people were killed then.
And in one of the reports of Abwehr, German military intelligence, it was stated: after an unsuccessful attempt to liberate Kharkov, undertaken by the Red Army in 1942, during the short time that the city was in the hands of the Soviet side, the NKVD border troops shot 4 thousand inhabitants.
“Among them are many girls who were friends with German soldiers, and especially those who were pregnant. Three witnesses were enough to eliminate them,” the report says.
innocent victims
The life of children born of Germans was not easier. Many of them (no matter where they lived - in the USSR or in Western Europe) had to fully experience humiliation.
Historians still cannot clearly determine how many “children of the occupation” appeared in different European countries. In France, it is believed that local women gave birth to 200 thousand babies from the Germans, in Norway - from 10 thousand to 12 thousand.
How many such children were born on the territory of the USSR is unknown. In an interview, the American historian Kurt Blaumeister stated that, according to his calculations, 50-100 thousand German babies were born in Russia, the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine during the occupation period. Compared to 73 million - the total number of people living in the occupied territories - this figure looks insignificant.
In France, it is believed that local women gave birth to 200 thousand babies from the Germans, in Norway - from 10 thousand to 12 thousand.
These children were considered outcast twice - both as born out of wedlock and as the fruit of a connection with the enemy.
In some countries, the rejection of the “children of the occupation” was fueled by the authorities. For example, in Norway, 90% of "German bastards" (tyskerunge), or "Nazi caviar" (naziyingel), were declared mentally disabled and sent to mental hospitals, where they were kept until the 1960s. Later, the Norwegian Union of Children of War said that "half wits" were used to test medicines.
It was only in 2005 that the parliament of the Scandinavian country officially apologized to these innocent victims of the war, and the justice committee approved compensation for their experience in the amount of 3 thousand euros.
The amount can be increased tenfold if the victims provide documentary evidence that they have faced hatred, fear and mistrust because of their origin.
The latter norm aroused indignation among local human rights activists, who rightly pointed out that it is difficult to prove beatings, offensive nicknames, etc., if this happened many years ago and some of the actors have already died.
Only in 2005 did the parliament of the Scandinavian country officially apologize to these innocent victims of the war, and the Justice Committee approved compensation for their experience in the amount of 3 thousand euros
In France, the "children of Boches" were initially treated with loyalty. Measures of influence were limited to a ban for them to learn German and bear German names. Of course, not all of them managed to avoid attacks from their peers and adults. In addition, many of these babies were abandoned by their mothers, and they were brought up in orphanages.
In 2006 the "Children of the Boches" united in the Heart Without Borders association. It was created by Jean-Jacques Delorme, whose father was a Wehrmacht soldier. The organization currently has 300 members.
“We founded this association because the French society infringed on our rights. The reason is that we were Franco-German children conceived during World War II. We have united in order to jointly search for our parents, help each other and carry out conservation work. historical memory. Why now? Previously, it was impossible to do this: the topic remained taboo, ”Delorme said in an interview.
By the way, since 2009, a law has been in force in Germany, according to which children born in France from Wehrmacht soldiers can receive German citizenship.
Non-Soviet children
Almost nothing is known about the fate of children born by Soviet women from the invaders. Rare archival data and eyewitness accounts indicate that they were treated quite humanely in the USSR. At least no one led any against them purposeful work. Most of the "children of war" seem to have received education, jobs and lived normal lives.
the only official document, indicating that the authorities were thinking about how to deal with German children, was a letter from Ivan Maisky, a well-known Soviet historian, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
Maisky wrote that it is difficult to establish the total number of such babies, but according to some data, we can talk about thousands of German chats.
On April 24, 1945, Maisky, together with a group of deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, sent a message to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. In it, the historian drew the attention of the leader to “one small issue” - children born in the territory occupied by Germany “due to the voluntary or forced cohabitation of Soviet women with the Germans.” Maisky wrote that it is difficult to establish the total number of such babies, but according to some data, we can talk about thousands of German chats.
“What to do with these children? Of course, they are not responsible for the sins of their parents, but is there any doubt that if the Germans live and grow up in those families and in the environment in which they were born, then their existence will be terrible? - the official asked Stalin.
To solve the problem, Maisky suggested taking German chats from their mothers and distributing them to orphanages. Moreover, during admission to the orphanage, the child must be given a new name, and the administration of the institution should not know where the new pupil came from and whose it is.
But if Maisky's letter to Stalin has been preserved, then the answer of the leader of the peoples is unknown, just as any reaction of the Kremlin to the message is unknown.
The order of the OKH on the creation of the legion was signed on August 15, 1942. At the beginning of 1943, in the "second wave" of the field battalions of the eastern legions, 3 Volga-Tatar troops (825, 826 and 827) were sent to the troops, and in the second half of 1943 - "third wave" - 4 Volga-Tatar (from 828th to 831st). At the end of 1943, the battalions were transferred to Southern France and placed in the city of Mand (Armenian, Azerbaijani and 829th Volga-Tatar battalions) . The 826th and 827th Volga-Tatar units were disarmed by the Germans due to the unwillingness of the soldiers to go into battle and numerous cases of desertion and were converted into road-building units.
Since the end of 1942, an underground organization has been operating in the legion, which set as its goal the internal ideological decomposition of the legion. The underground printed anti-fascist leaflets distributed among the legionnaires.
For participation in an underground organization on August 25, 1944, 11 Tatar legionnaires were guillotined in the Plötzensee military prison in Berlin: Gainan Kurmashev, Musa Jalil, Abdulla Alish, Fuat Saifulmulyukov, Fuat Bulatov, Garif Shabaev, Akhmet Simaev, Abdulla Battalov, Zinnat Khasanov, Akhat Atnashev and Salim Bukharov.
The actions of the Tatar underground led to the fact that of all the national battalions (14 Turkestan, 8 Azerbaijani, 7 North Caucasian, 8 Georgian, 8 Armenian, 7 Volga-Tatar battalions), it was the Tatars who were the most unreliable for the Germans, and it was they who fought the least against the Soviet troops
Cossack camp (Kosakenlager) - military organization during the Great Patriotic War, which united the Cossacks in the Wehrmacht and the SS.
In October 1942, in Novocherkassk, occupied by German troops, with the permission of the German authorities, a Cossack gathering was held, at which the headquarters of the Don Cossacks was elected. The organization of Cossack formations as part of the Wehrmacht begins, both in the occupied territories and in the emigrant environment. The Cossacks took an active part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. In particular, Cossacks from the Cossack police battalion formed in 1943 in Warsaw (more than 1000 people), the escort guard hundred (250 people), the Cossack battalion of the 570th security regiment, the 5th Kuban regiment Cossack camp under the command of Colonel Bondarenko. One of the Cossack units, led by the cornet I. Anikin, was given the task of capturing the headquarters of the head of the Polish insurgent movement, General T. Bur-Komorovsky. The Cossacks captured about 5 thousand rebels. For their diligence, the German command awarded many of the Cossacks and officers with the Order of the Iron Cross.
By the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 25, 1997, Krasnov P.N., Shkuro A.G., Sultan-Girey Klych, Krasnov S.N. and Domanov T.I. were recognized as justifiably convicted and not subject to rehabilitation.
Wehrmacht Cossack (1944)
Cossacks with Wehrmacht stripes.
Warsaw, August 1944. Nazi Cossacks suppress the Polish uprising. In the center is Major Ivan Frolov along with other officers. The soldier on the right, judging by the stripes, belongs to the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) of General Vlasov.
The uniform of the Cossacks was predominantly German.
Georgian Legion (Die Georgische Legion, cargo.) - Reichswehr unit, later Wehrmacht. The legion existed from 1915 to 1917 and from 1941 to 1945.
At its first creation, it was staffed by volunteers from among the Georgians who were captured during the 1st World War. During the Second World War, the legion was replenished with volunteers from among the Soviet prisoners of war of Georgian nationality.
From the participation of Georgians and other Caucasians in other units, a special detachment for propaganda and sabotage "Bergman" - "Highlander" is known, which consisted of 300 Germans, 900 Caucasians and 130 Georgian emigrants, who made up special unit Abwehr "Tamara II", founded in Germany in March 1942. Theodor Oberländer, a career intelligence officer and a major specialist in Eastern problems, became the first commander of the detachment. The unit included agitators and consisted of 5 companies: 1st, 4th, 5th Georgian; 2nd North Caucasian; 3rd - Armenian. Since August 1942, "Bergman" - "Highlander" operated in the Caucasian theater - carried out sabotage and agitation in the Soviet rear in the Grozny and Ischera directions, in the area of Nalchik, Mozdok and mineral waters. During the period of fighting in the Caucasus, 4 rifle companies were formed from defectors and prisoners - Georgian, North Caucasian, Armenian and mixed, four cavalry squadrons - 3 North Caucasian and 1 Georgian.
Georgian unit of the Wehrmacht, 1943
Latvian SS Volunteer Legion.
This formation was part of the SS troops, and was formed from two SS divisions: the 15th Grenadier and the 19th Grenadier. In 1942, the Latvian civil administration, in order to help the Wehrmacht, offered the German side to create on a volunteer basis armed forces with a total strength of 100 thousand people, with the condition that Latvia's independence be recognized after the end of the war. Hitler rejected this offer. In February 1943, after the defeat of the German troops near Stalingrad, the Nazi command decided to form the Latvian national units as part of the SS. On March 28 in Riga, each legionnaire took the oath
In the name of God, I solemnly promise in the fight against the Bolsheviks unlimited obedience to the Commander-in-Chief armed forces Germany to Adolf Hitler and for this promise I, as a brave warrior, am always ready to give my life. As a result, in May 1943, on the basis of six Latvian police battalions (16th, 18th, 19th, As part of Army Group North, the Latvian SS Volunteer Brigade was organized as part of the 1st and 2nd Latvian Volunteer Regiments. At the same time, volunteers of ten ages (born 1914-1924) were recruited for the 15th Latvian SS Volunteer Division, three regiments of which (3rd, 4th and 5th Latvian volunteers) were formed by mid-June. The division received direct participation in punitive actions against Soviet citizens in the territories of the Leningrad and Novgorod regions. In 1943, parts of the division participated in punitive operations against Soviet partisans in the areas of the cities of Nevel, Opochka and Pskov (3 km from Pskov, they shot 560 people).
The servicemen of the Latvian SS divisions also participated in the brutal murders of those captured Soviet soldiers including women.
Having captured the prisoners, the German scoundrels staged a bloody massacre over them. Private Karaulov N.K., junior sergeant Korsakov Ya.P. and guard lieutenant Bogdanov E.R., the Germans and traitors from the Latvian SS units gouged out their eyes and inflicted many stab wounds. Guard Lieutenants Kaganovich and Kosmin, they carved stars on their foreheads, twisted their legs and knocked out their teeth with boots. Medical instructor Sukhanova A.A. and three other nurses had their chests cut out, their legs and arms were twisted, and many stab wounds were inflicted. Soldiers Egorov F. E., Satybatynov, Antonenko A. N., Plotnikov P. and foreman Afanasyev were brutally tortured. None of the wounded, captured by the Germans and the Latvian fascists, escaped torture and painful abuse. According to reports, the brutal massacre of wounded Soviet soldiers and officers was carried out by soldiers and officers of one of the battalions of the 43rd rifle regiment 19th Latvian SS division. And so on in Poland, Belarus.
Parade of Latvian legionnaires in honor of the founding day of the Republic of Latvia.
20th SS Grenadier Division (1st Estonian).
In accordance with the charter of the SS troops, recruitment was carried out on a voluntary basis, and those who wished to serve in this unit had to meet the requirements of the SS troops for health and ideological reasons. .It was allowed to accept the Baltic states to serve in the Wehrmacht and create from them special teams and volunteer battalions for anti-partisan struggle. In this regard, the commander of the 18th Army, Colonel-General von Kühler, 6 Estonian security detachments were formed from scattered Omakaitse detachments on a voluntary basis (with a contract for 1 year). At the end of the same year, all six units were reorganized into three eastern battalions and one eastern company. In the Estonian police battalions, staffed with national cadres, there was only one German observer officer. An indicator of the special confidence of the Germans in the Estonian police battalions was the fact that they introduced military ranks Wehrmacht. On October 1, 1942, the entire Estonian police force consisted of 10.4 thousand people, to which 591 Germans were seconded.
According to archival documents of the German command of that period, the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade, together with other units of the German army, carried out punitive operations "Heinrik" and "Fritz" to eliminate Soviet partisans in the Polotsk-Nevel-Idritsa-Sebezh region, which were carried out in October -December 1943.
Turkestan Legion - the formation of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, which was part of the Eastern Legion and consisting of volunteers from representatives of the Turkic peoples of the republics of the USSR and Central Asia(Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Kirghiz, Uighurs, Tatars, Kumyks, etc.). The Turkestan Legion was created on November 15, 1941 under the 444th Security Division in the form of the Turkestan Regiment. The Turkestan regiment consisted of four companies. In the winter of 1941/42, he carried out security service in Northern Tavria. The order to create the Turkestan Legion was issued on December 17, 1941 (together with the Caucasian, Georgian and Armenian legions); Turkmens, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Karakalpaks and Tajiks were accepted into the legion. The Legion were not homogeneous in ethnic composition- in addition to the natives of Turkestan, Azerbaijanis and representatives of the North Caucasian peoples also served in it. In May 1943, an experimental 162nd Turkestan infantry division was formed in Neuhammer under the command of Major General von Niedermeier. In September 1943, the division was sent to Slovenia, and then to Italy, where it carried out security service and fought partisans. At the end of the war, the Turkestan Legion joined the Eastern Turkic SS unit (numbering - 8 thousand).
North Caucasian Legion of the Wehrmacht (Nordkaukasische Legion), later the 2nd Turkestan Legion.
The formation of the legion began in September 1942 near Warsaw from Caucasian prisoners of war. The volunteers included representatives of such peoples as Chechens, Ingush, Kabardians, Balkars, Tabasarans and so on. Initially, the legion consisted of three battalions, commanded by Captain Gutman.
The North Caucasian Committee participated in the formation of the legion and the call for volunteers. His leadership included the Dagestani Akhmed-Nabi Agaev (Abwehr agent) and Sultan-Girey Klych ( former general White Army, chairman of the Mountain Committee). The Committee published the newspaper "Gazavat" in Russian.
The legion included a total of eight battalions numbered 800, 802, 803, 831, 835, 836, 842 and 843. They served both in Normandy, and in Holland, and in Italy. In 1945, the legion was included in the North Caucasian battle group of the Caucasian formation of the SS troops and fought against the Soviet troops until the end of the war. The soldiers of the legion who fell into Soviet captivity were sentenced by courts-martial to death penalty for cooperation with the Nazi occupiers.
The Armenian Legion (Armenische Legion) is a formation of the Wehrmacht, consisting of representatives of the Armenian people.
The military goal of this formation was the state independence of Armenia from the Soviet Union. Armenian legionnaires were part of 11 battalions, as well as other units. The total number of legionnaires reached 18 thousand people.
Armenian Legionnaires.
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In some historical research claimed to be on Hitler's side during the period World War II fought up to 1 million citizens of the USSR. This figure may well be challenged downward, but it is obvious that in percentage most of these traitors were not fighters of the Vlasov Russian Liberation Army (ROA) or various kinds of SS national legions, but local security units, whose representatives were called policemen.
FOLLOWING THE WEHRMAHT
They appeared after the invaders. Wehrmacht soldiers, having seized this or that Soviet settlement, in a hot hand shot all those who did not have time to hide from uninvited newcomers: Jews, party and Soviet workers, family members of Red Army commanders.
Having done their heinous deed, the soldiers in gray uniforms went further east. And to support new order»Auxiliary units and the German military police remained in the occupied territory. Naturally, the Germans did not know the local realities and were poorly oriented in what was happening in the territory they controlled.
Belarusian policemen
In order to successfully fulfill their duties, the invaders needed helpers from the local population. And those were found. The German administration in the occupied territories began to form the so-called "Auxiliary Police".
What was this structure?
So, the Auxiliary Police (Hilfspolizei) was created by the German occupation administration in the occupied territories from people who were considered supporters of the new government. The corresponding units were not independent and were subordinate to the German police departments. Local administrations (city and rural councils) were engaged only in purely administrative work related to the functioning of police detachments - their formation, payment of salaries, bringing to their attention the orders of the German authorities, etc.
The term "auxiliary" emphasized the lack of independence of the police in relation to the Germans. There was not even a uniform name - in addition to Hilfspolizei, such as “local police”, “security police”, “order service”, “self-defense” were also used.
Uniform uniforms for members of the auxiliary police were not provided. As a rule, policemen wore armbands with the inscription Polizei, but their uniform was arbitrary (for example, they could wear Soviet military uniforms with their insignia removed).
The police, recruited from citizens of the USSR, accounted for nearly 30% of all local collaborators. The policemen were one of the most despised type of collaborators by our people. And there were good reasons for this...
In February 1943, the number of policemen in the territory occupied by the Germans reached approximately 70 thousand people.
TYPES OF TRAITORS
From whom was this "auxiliary police" most often formed? Representatives of, relatively speaking, five categories of the population, different in their goals and views, went to it.
The first is the so-called "ideological" opponents of Soviet power. Among them, former White Guards and criminals convicted under the so-called political articles of the then Criminal Code prevailed. They perceived the arrival of the Germans as an opportunity to take revenge on the “commissars and Bolsheviks” for past grievances.
Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists also got the opportunity to kill "damned Muscovites and Jews" to their heart's content.
The second category is those who, under any political regime, are trying to stay afloat, gain power and the opportunity to rob and mock their own compatriots to their heart's content. Often, representatives of the first category did not deny that they joined the police in order to combine the motive of revenge with the opportunity to fill their pockets with other people's goods.
Here, for example, is a fragment from the testimony of policeman Ogryzkin, given by him to representatives of the Soviet punitive authorities in 1944 in Bobruisk:
“I went to cooperate with the Germans because I considered myself offended by the Soviet authorities. Before the revolution, my family had a lot of property and a workshop that brought in a good income.<...>I thought that the Germans, as a cultured European nation, want to liberate Russia from Bolshevism and return the old order. Therefore, he accepted an offer to join the police.
<...>The police had the highest salaries and good rations, in addition, it was possible to use their official position for personal enrichment ... "
As an illustration, let's cite another document - a fragment of the testimony of policeman Grunsky during the trial of traitors to the Motherland in Smolensk (autumn 1944).
“...Voluntarily agreeing to cooperate with the Germans, I just wanted to survive. Fifty to a hundred people died in the camp every day. Becoming a Volunteer the only way survive. Those who expressed a desire to cooperate were immediately separated from the general mass of prisoners of war. They began to feed normally and changed into fresh clothes. Soviet uniform, but with German stripes and an obligatory bandage on the shoulder ... "
It must be said that the policemen themselves were well aware that their life depended on the situation at the front, and tried to use every opportunity to drink, eat, cuddle local widows and rob.
During one of the feasts, Ivan Raskin, deputy chief of police of the Sapychskaya volost, Pogarsky district, Bryansk region, made a toast, from which, according to eyewitnesses of this booze, the eyes of those present went to their foreheads in surprise: “We know that the people hate us, that they are waiting for the arrival Red Army. So let's hurry to live, drink, walk, enjoy life today, because tomorrow they will cut off our heads anyway.
"FAITHFUL, BRAVE, OBEDIENT"
Among the policemen, there was also a special group of those who were especially hated by the inhabitants of the occupied Soviet territories. We are talking about employees of the so-called security battalions. Their hands were up to the elbows in blood! On account of the punishers from these battalions, hundreds of thousands of ruined human lives.
For reference, it should be clarified that the so-called Schutzmannschafts (German Schutzmann-schaft - security team, abbr. Schuma) were special police units - punitive battalions operating under the command of the Germans and together with other German units. Members of the Schutzmannschafts wore German military uniforms, but with special insignia: on the headdress there was a swastika in a laurel wreath, on the left sleeve a swastika in a laurel wreath with the motto in German "Tgei Tapfer Gehorsam" - "Loyal, brave, obedient".
Policemen at work as executioners
Each battalion in the state was to have five hundred people, including nine Germans. In total, eleven Belarusian Schuma battalions, one artillery division, one Schuma cavalry squadron were formed. At the end of February 1944, there were 2,167 people in these units.
More Ukrainian Schuma police battalions were created: fifty-two in Kyiv, twelve in Western Ukraine and two in the Chernihiv region, with a total number of 35 thousand people. Russian battalions were not created at all, although Russian traitors served in the Schuma battalions of other nationalities.
What did the policemen from the punitive detachments do? And the same thing that all executioners usually do - murders, murders and more murders. Moreover, the policemen killed everyone in a row, regardless of gender and age.
Here is a typical example. In Bila Tserkva, not far from Kyiv, the “Sonderkommando 4-a” of SS Standartenführer Paul Blombel was operating. The ditches were filled with Jews - dead men and women, but only from the age of 14, children were not killed. Finally, having finished shooting the last adults, after altercations, the employees of the Sonderkommando destroyed everyone who was over seven years old.
Only about 90 young children survived, ranging in age from a few months to five, six or seven years old. Even the German, worldly-wise executioners could not destroy such small children ... And not at all out of pity - they were simply afraid of a nervous breakdown and subsequent mental disorders. Then it was decided: let the German lackeys - the local Ukrainian policemen - destroy the Jewish children.
From the memoirs of an eyewitness, a German from this Ukrainian Schuma:
“Wehrmacht soldiers have already dug the grave. The children were taken there on a tractor. The technical side of things did not concern me. The Ukrainians stood around and trembled. The children were unloaded from the tractor. They were placed on the edge of the grave - when the Ukrainians started shooting at them, the children fell there. The wounded also fell into the grave. I will never forget this sight for the rest of my life. It is in front of my eyes all the time. I especially remember the little blond girl who took my hand. Then they shot her too."
MURDERERS ON "TOURS"
However, punishers from Ukrainian punitive battalions"distinguished" and on the road. Few people know that the infamous Belarusian village of Khatyn was destroyed with all its inhabitants not by the Germans, but by Ukrainian policemen from the 118th police battalion.
This punitive unit was created in June 1942 in Kyiv from among the former members of the Kyiv and Bukovina kurens of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Almost all of its personnel were staffed former commanders or privates of the Red Army who were taken prisoner in the first months of the war.
Even before being enrolled in the ranks of the battalion, all of its future fighters agreed to serve the Nazis and undergo military training in Germany. Vasyura was appointed chief of staff of the battalion, who almost single-handedly led the unit in all punitive operations.
After the completion of the formation, the 118th police battalion first "distinguished itself" in the eyes of the invaders, taking an active part in the mass executions in Kyiv, in the infamous Babi Yar.
Grigory Vasyura - the executioner of Khatyn (photo taken shortly before being shot by a court verdict)
March 22, 1943 118th battalion security police entered the village of Khatyn and surrounded it. The entire population of the village, young and old - old people, women, children - were driven out of their homes and driven into a collective farm barn.
The butts of machine guns were lifted from the bed of the sick, the elderly, did not spare women with small and infant children.
When all the people were gathered in the shed, the punishers locked the doors, surrounded the shed with straw, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The wooden shed quickly caught fire. Under the pressure of dozens of human bodies, they could not stand it and the doors collapsed.
In burning clothes, terrified, gasping, people rushed to run, but those who escaped from the flames were shot from machine guns. The fire killed 149 villagers, including 75 children under the age of sixteen. The village itself was completely destroyed.
The chief of staff of the 118th security police battalion was Grigory Vasyura, who single-handedly led the battalion and its operations.
interesting further fate executioner of Khatyn. When the 118th battalion was defeated, Vasyura continued to serve in the 14th SS Grenadier Division "Galicia", and at the very end of the war, in the 76th infantry regiment, which was broken in France. After the war in the filtration camp, he managed to cover his tracks.
Only in 1952, for cooperation with the Nazis during the war, the tribunal of the Kyiv military district sentenced Vasyura to 25 years in prison. At that time, nothing was known about his punitive activities.
On September 17, 1955, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a decree "On the amnesty of Soviet citizens who collaborated with the invaders during the war of 1941-1945", and Vasyura was released. He returned to his native Cherkasy region. The KGB officers nevertheless found and again arrested the criminal.
By that time, he was no less than the deputy director of one of the large state farms near Kyiv. Vasyura was very fond of speaking to the pioneers, introducing himself as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a front-line signalman. He was even considered an honorary cadet in one of the military schools in Kyiv.
From November to December 1986, Minsk hosted trial over Grigory Vasyura. Fourteen volumes of file N9 104 reflected many specific facts of the bloody activities of the Nazi punisher. By the decision of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, Vasyura was found guilty of all the crimes incriminated to him and sentenced to the then capital punishment - execution.
During the trial, it was established that he personally destroyed more than 360 peaceful women, the elderly, and children. The executioner petitioned for pardon, where, in particular, he wrote: “I ask you to give me, a sick old man, the opportunity to live life with my family in freedom.”
At the end of 1986, the sentence was carried out.
redeemed
After the defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad, many of those who "faithfully and obediently" served the invaders began to think about their future. The reverse process began: the policemen, who had not stained themselves with massacres, began to leave for partisan detachments, taking service weapons with them. According to Soviet historians, in the central part of the USSR, partisan detachments by the time of liberation consisted of an average of one-fifth of police defectors.
Here is what was written in the report of the Leningrad headquarters of the partisan movement:
“In September 1943, intelligence officers and intelligence officers decomposed more than ten enemy garrisons, ensured the transition to the partisans up to a thousand people ... Scouts and intelligence workers of the 1st partisan brigade in November 1943 decomposed six enemy garrisons in the settlements of Batory, Lokot, Terentino , Polovo and sent more than eight hundred of them to the partisan brigade.
There were also cases of mass transfers of entire detachments of people who collaborated with the Nazis to the side of the partisans.
On August 16, 1943, the commander of the "Druzhina No. 1", a former lieutenant colonel of the Red Army Gil-Rodionov, and 2200 fighters under his command, having previously shot all the Germans and especially anti-Soviet commanders, moved to the partisans.
The 1st Anti-Fascist Partisan Brigade was formed from the former combatants, and its commander received the rank of colonel and was awarded the Order of the Red Star. The brigade later distinguished itself in battles with the Germans.
Gil-Rodionov himself died on May 14, 1944 with a weapon in his hands near the Belarusian village of Ushachi, covering the breakthrough of a partisan detachment blocked by the Germans. At the same time, his brigade suffered big losses- out of 1413 fighters, 1026 people died.
Well, when the Red Army came, it was time for the policemen to answer for everything. Many of them were shot immediately after their release. The People's Court was often swift but fair. The punishers and executioners who managed to escape were still looking for the competent authorities for a long time.
INSTEAD OF EPILOGUE. EX-PUNISHER-VETERAN
The fate of the female punisher, known as Tonka the machine gunner, is interesting and unusual.
Antonina Makarovna Makarova, a Muscovite, served in 1942-1943 with the famous Nazi accomplice Bronislav Kaminsky, who later became the SS Brigadeführer (major general). Makarova acted as an executioner in the Lokot self-government district controlled by Bronislav Kaminsky. She preferred to kill her victims with a machine gun.
“All those sentenced to death were the same for me. Only their number has changed. Usually I was ordered to shoot a group of 27 people - that's how many partisans the cell contained. I shot about 500 meters from the prison near a pit.
The arrested were placed in a chain facing the pit. One of the men rolled out my machine gun to the place of execution. At the command of the authorities, I knelt down and shot at people until everyone fell dead ... ”- she later said during interrogations.
“I did not know those whom I shoot. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. Sometimes you shoot, you come closer, and someone else twitches. Then again she shot in the head so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes a few prisoners had a piece of plywood hung on their chests with the inscription "Partisan". Some people sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardroom or in the yard. There were plenty of ammo…”
Often she had to shoot people with entire families, including children.
After the war, she lived happily for another thirty-three years, got married, became a veteran of labor and an honorary citizen of her town Lepel in Vitebsk region Belarus. Her husband was also a participant in the war, was awarded with orders and medals. Two adult daughters were proud of their mother.
She was often invited to schools to tell children about her heroic past as a front-line nurse. Nevertheless, all this time Makarov was looking for Soviet justice. And only many years later, an accident allowed the investigators to attack her trail. She confessed to her crimes. In 1978, at the age of fifty-five, Tonka the machine-gunner was shot by a court verdict.
Oleg SEMENOV, journalist (St. Petersburg), "Sovershenno sekretno" newspaper
May 15, 2015, 06:53Alex Lyuty (Yukhnovsky Alexander Ivanovich)
He served in the "branch of the Gestapo", threw into the pit of the mine, which became the largest mass grave in the world, Soviet people, and then got to high positions in Moscow ...
Alex Fierce committed especially many bloody atrocities in Kadievka (now the city of Stakhanov, Luhansk region). It seemed that he did everything to avoid responsibility for war crimes. But a couple of decades after the war, the exposure happened. And she did it in the capital of the USSR, surprisingly, a woman from Kadiev. And the documents of the investigation in the case of Alex Fierce were declassified only recently.
A native of Kadievka, Vera Kravets graduated from a Moscow university and then finally settled in the capital. Once on the street, she accidentally ran into an imposing middle-aged man and dropped a stack of books from her hands. The man apologized and helped the woman pick up the books that were scattered on the sidewalk.
For a moment they looked into each other's eyes. The man did not recognize Vera. But she immediately realized that this was the same Alex Lyuty, who, during the war in Stakhanov, beat and tortured her, a twelve-year-old girl, accusing her of having links with the partisans, and then, completely exhausted, threw her into the mine pit. Faith miraculously remained alive and even crawled to the surface.
Photo from the criminal case
Trying to keep her composure, Vera Kravets thanked the "stranger" and decided to quietly follow him. I saw that he went to the editorial office of the newspaper "Red Warrior". I asked the janitor, who was sweeping the garbage near the front door, who this man was. The janitor replied: "Respected by all, the editor-in-chief of the Krasny Warrior newspaper, Alexander Yuryevich Mironenko."
After that, Vera went to the KGB.
The investigator could not immediately believe what the woman was telling. Nothing matched the documents that Mironenko had. Alexander Yuryevich was at the front throughout the war. He reached the very lair of the fascist beast. He has many awards, including the Order of Glory, medals "For the victory over Germany", "For the capture of Berlin" and others. Mironenko served in the Soviet army until October 1951. After graduating from the regimental school, he was a squad leader and assistant platoon commander in a reconnaissance company, head of record keeping, and a staff clerk. In 1946, 21-year-old Mironenko joined the Komsomol, he was elected to the local bureau of the Komsomol. He wrote articles for newspapers, denouncing fascism and glorifying our valiant victorious warriors. Given the talents of Alexander, he was seconded to the newspaper "Soviet Army". In the editorial office Mironenko worked in international department because he knew Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and German languages. After demobilization, Alexander and his wife came to Moscow and made a quick journalistic career here.
Having expressed his doubts to Vera that she was not mistaken, because many years had passed after the war, the investigator nevertheless decided to take up the verification of the data relating to Mironenko's biography.
The investigator made an inquiry regarding the circumstances of awarding Alexander Mironenko with the Order of Glory. From the archive came a discouraging answer: in the lists awarded with the order There is no glory of Mironenko Alexander Yurievich ...
When the Great Patriotic War began, Sasha Yukhnovsky was 16 years old. His father, a former officer in the Petliura army, worked as an agronomist in the Romensky district of the Sumy region. The elder Yukhnovsky hated the Soviet regime, and when the Germans captured Ukraine, he was incredibly happy about this. On the instructions of the invaders, he formed the local police, where he attached his son as a translator. Sasha immediately began to make progress in establishing the "new order" established by the Nazis. He was enlisted for all types of allowance, he was given a gun.
Soon, Alexander Yukhnovsky, for his special zeal in the fight against the enemies of the Reich, was transferred to the GFP, which was considered honorable by the police. Yukhnovsky ends up in Kadievka, Luhansk region. Here he excelled so much in torturing and tormenting local residents suspected of having links with partisans or underground fighters that even the most notorious thugs from the Gestapo were amazed. For this, Alexander Yukhnovsky was nicknamed Alex the Fierce, moreover, both the Germans and the residents of Kadievka at the same time, of course, without saying a word.
KGB investigators began to study the archives of GFP-721, where they found information about Yukhnovsky, who was remarkably similar to Mironenko. Enough data has survived to be horrified by what is listed there, and to find bloodthirsty traitors. The Germans recorded in detail in their reports to the command of the "branch of the Gestapo" how many people were arrested, interrogated, beaten, executed. The mine 4-4-bis "Kalinovka" of the Donetsk region also figured there, to the pit of which the executed and the living were brought from all over the considerable district, including from Kadievka.
There were numerous witnesses to the crimes of the Nazis and their accomplices, who often threw the living and the dead into the pit, driving crowds of people to the place of execution. Locksmith Avdeev said: “In May 1943, two German officer a girl of 10-12 years old was pulled out of a passenger car and dragged to the mine shaft. She resisted with all her might and shouted: “Oh, uncle, don’t shoot!” The screams went on for a long time. Then I heard a shot and the girl stopped screaming.” Another locksmith reported how two living children were thrown into the mine. The watchman saw how women with babies were brought to the pit. Mothers were killed, babies were thrown alive into the pit after them. Mining engineer Alexander Polozhentsev also flew into the pit alive. Falling, he grabbed the rope, swaying, moved into the wall niche, in which he hid up to dark night. Then he climbed up.
In such atrocities, Alex the Fierce always stood out before the German masters. Witness Khmil cannot forget: “Yukhnovsky beat the woman on the head and back with a rubber truncheon, and kicked her in the lower abdomen, dragged her by the hair. Approximately two hours later, I saw how Yukhnovsky, together with other employees of the GUF, dragged this woman from the interrogation room into the corridor, she could not walk or stand. There was blood running between her legs. I asked Sasha not to beat me, said that he was not guilty of anything, even knelt before him, but he was inexorable. The interpreter Sasha interrogated and beat me with passion, with initiative.”
They poured into the mine shaft caustic soda for compaction and ramming of human bodies. Before the retreat, the Germans filled up the mine shaft ...
After the liberation of Donbass, the mines that had been idle during the occupation began to be restored. First of all, of course, they removed the bodies of executed Soviet people. No one expected that such an incredible treasure was buried in the Kalinovka mine. great amount of people. Of the 365 meters deep of the mine, 330 meters were littered with corpses. The width of the pit is 2.9 meters.
According to rough estimates, Kalinovka became the place of execution of 75 thousand people. Neither before nor since has there been such a mass grave anywhere on our planet. Only 150 people were identified.
Be that as it may, in the summer of 1944, the fate of Alex Lyuty took a sharp turn: in the Odessa region, he lagged behind the GFP-721 convoy and after some time appeared at the field recruiting office of the Red Army, calling himself Mironenko. And one can only speculate: did this happen due to military confusion or in pursuance of the orders of the owners?
Mironenko-Yukhnovsky served in the Soviet army from September 1944 to October 1951 - and served well. He was a squad leader, a platoon commander in a reconnaissance company, head of the office of a motorcycle battalion, then a clerk of the headquarters of the 191st Rifle and 8th Guards Mechanized Divisions.
He was awarded the medal "For Courage", medals for the capture of Koenigsberg, Warsaw, Berlin. As colleagues recalled, he was distinguished by considerable courage and composure. In 1948, Mironenko-Yukhnovsky was seconded to the disposal of the Political Directorate of the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany (GSOVG). There he worked in the editorial office of the newspaper "Soviet Army", printed translations, articles, poems. Published in Ukrainian newspapers - for example, in Prykarpatskaya Pravda.
He also worked on the radio: Soviet and German. During his service in the Political Administration, he received numerous thanks, and, by a bitter twist of fate, for speeches and journalism that exposed fascism.
After demobilization, he moved to Moscow and got married. From that moment, Yukhnovsky began to make, albeit not swift, but even and successful career climbing confidently up.
And everywhere he was noted with thanks, diplomas, encouragements, successfully promoted, became a member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR. Translated from German, Polish, Czech. In 1962, for example, his translation of the book by the Czechoslovak writer Radko Pytlik "Fighting Yaroslav Gashek" was published - and an excellent translation, it should be noted.
By the mid-70s, he, already an exemplary family man and father adult daughter, became the head of the editorial office of the publishing house of the Ministry civil aviation. The publishing house "Voenizdat" accepted for publication a book of his memoirs about the war, written, as reviewers noted, fascinatingly and with great knowledge of the matter, which, however, is not surprising, since Mironenko-Yukhnovsky was an actual participant in many events ...
The editors of the Red Warrior were shocked by the arrest of their editor-in-chief and especially by the fact that he was accused. I didn’t want to believe in such a thing, but I had to believe it, because Mironenko confessed to everything, although far, far from immediately. He denied for a long time, they say, joining the police, he was only an executor of someone else's will - first his father, then the Germans. He claimed that he did not take part in the executions. But the witnesses gave different facts. It was impossible to disprove them. Investigators carried out work in 44 settlements, where HFP-721 left its bloody traces. Yukhnovsky-Fierce-Mironenko was everywhere remembered with horror.
A trial was held, and a verdict was delivered that left no doubt.
Already in the 2000s, this case, being among the declassified ones, suddenly became famous in its own way. Suffice it to say that three books were dedicated to him: Felix Vladimirov's "The Price of Treason", Heinrich Hoffmann's "Gestapo Officer" and Andrei Medvedenko's "You Can't Not Come Back". It even formed the basis of as many as two films: one of the series of the documentary series “Nazi Hunters” and a film from the “Investigation Conducted” series on the NTV channel, called “Nicknamed Fierce”.
Antonina Makarova (Tonka the machine gunner)
On August 11, 1979, the sentence was carried out to the executioner of the Lokotsky self-government - Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg, nicknamed "Tonka the machine gunner", the only woman in the world - the killer of 1,500 people.
Makarova, being a nurse in 1941, was surrounded and after a 3-month wandering through the Bryansk forests ended up in the Lokotsky district.
A 20-year-old girl became an executioner, every morning from a machine gun polished by the owner, shooting people - partisans, sympathizers, their families (children, teenagers, women, old people). After the execution, Tonya Makarova finished off the wounded and collected women's things she liked. And in the evening, having washed off the blood stains, dressed up, she went to the officers' club to find herself another friend for the night.
Makarova is the only female punisher shot in the USSR.
The first time Makarova was killed after drinking moonshine. She was caught on the street, ragged, dirty and homeless by local police. They warmed them up, gave them a drink, and, handing a machine gun in their hands, took them out into the yard. Completely drunk, Tonya did not really understand what was happening and did not resist. But when I saw 30 marks in my hand (good money), I was delighted and agreed to cooperate. Makarova was given a bed at the stud farm and told to go “to work” in the morning.
Tonya quickly got used to the “work”: “I did not know those whom I shoot. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. Sometimes you shoot, you come closer, and someone else twitches. Then again she shot in the head so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes a few prisoners had a piece of plywood hung on their chests with the inscription "Partisan". Some people sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardroom or in the yard. There were plenty of cartridges ... "; “It seemed to me that the war would write everything off. I was just doing my job for which I was paid. It was necessary to shoot not only partisans, but also members of their families, women, teenagers. I tried not to think about it…”
At night, Makarova loved to walk around the former stable, converted by the police into a prison - after brutal interrogations, those sentenced to death were taken there and the girl Tonya spent hours peering into the faces of the people whom she was to take their lives in the morning.
Immediately after the war, Makarova happily escaped retribution - at the moment when they were advancing Soviet troops she was diagnosed with a venereal disease and the Germans ordered Tonya to be sent to their distant rear - to be treated (as a valuable shot?). When the Red Army entered Lokot, only a huge mass grave of 1,500 people remained from the “Tonka the machine gunner” (passport data was established for 200 dead - the death of these people formed the basis of the absentee charge of the punisher Antonina Makarova, born in 1921, presumably a resident of Moscow - nothing more was known about the executioner).
For more than thirty years, the KGB officers have been looking for the killer. All Antonina Makarovs born in the Soviet Union in 1921 were checked (there were 250 of them). But "Tonka the machine-gunner disappeared."
In 1976, a Moscow official by the name of Parfyonov processed documents for traveling abroad. Filling out the questionnaire, he listed the passport details of his brothers and sisters - 5 people. All were Parfenovs and only one - Antonina Makarovna Makarova, since 1945 Ginzburg (by her husband), living in Belarus, in the city of Lepel.
They became interested in Parfyonov's sister, Antonina Ginzburg, and for a year they were monitoring her, fearing in vain to slander ... a veteran of the Second World War! Receiving all the benefits due, regularly speaking at the invitation of schools and labor collectives, an exemplary wife and mother of two children! I had to take witnesses to Lepel for secret identification (including some of Tonka's fellow policemen serving their sentences and lovers).
When Makarova-Gunzburg was arrested, she told how she fled from a German hospital, realizing that the war was over - the Nazis were leaving, married a front-line soldier, straightened her veteran's documents and hid in a small, provincial Lepel. Tonka slept well, nothing tormented her: “What nonsense, that then remorse is tormented. That those you kill come at night in nightmares. I still haven't dreamed of one."
They shot 55-year-old Makarova-Ginzburg early in the morning, rejecting all petitions for pardon. What came as a complete surprise to her (!), She complained to the prison guards more than once: “They disgraced me in my old age, now after the verdict I will have to leave Lepel, otherwise every fool will poke a finger at me. I think they will give me three years probation. For what more? Then you need to somehow re-arrange life. And how much is your salary in the pre-trial detention center, girls? Maybe I can get a job with you - the work is familiar ... "!
There was about Makarova on Gossip in 2013.
Leonty Tisler
For an increase in pension in Estonia, a former policeman needs confirmation of his cooperation with the Nazis
In the regional department of the FSB in the Pskov region, sometimes surprising documents are kept. Among them is the correspondence with a resident of the former Estonian Republic, Leonty Andreevich Tisler. The first letter from this strange folder is dated October 5, 1991. In it, a resident of the city of Viljandi applied to the law enforcement agencies of the Pskov region with a request for rehabilitation.
“I was arrested on October 26, 1950,” Leonty Andreevich wrote, “in the village of Väläotsa, now the Estonian collective farm. The investigation was conducted in Pskov. In January 1951, a military tribunal sentenced me on the basis of Art. 58-1 "a" to 25 years in prison with disqualification. The crime scene was the village of Domkino, where mostly Estonians lived. I was accused of fighting against the partisans, but in fact we were protecting our property and livestock from the robbery of the so-called partisans. They set fire to the village, there was shooting, they killed 7 people (women). From September 1943 I lived in Estonia... From October 1944 to April 1948 I served in the Soviet Army as part of the Estonian Corps, participated in the battles in Courland until the end of the war. Veteran, certificate No. 509861 dated December 15, 1980. Followed by a signature and a number.
The regional prosecutor's office immediately got involved in the case. A special group of highly qualified lawyers, who still continue to review cases related to rehabilitation, also took up the Tisler case. A weighty volume with the number 2275, begun on October 22, 1950, was taken out into the world, on charges of Elmar Khindrikson (born 1911), Eduard Kollam (born 1919), Leonty Tisler (born 1924), Ewald Yuhkoma (born 1922) and Eric Oinas in treason against the Motherland. Decision on arrest, testimonies, interrogations of the accused, their photographs, fingerprints, investigative report. Everything is neatly filed and documented. Meticulous jurists learned from him that Leonty Andreevich, an eighteen-year-old guy, voluntarily (this was confirmed by his personal confession and numerous testimonies) joined the Estonian punitive detachment - EKA, received a rifle, ammunition. At first he carried out guard duty (he guarded the oil plant, the water pump), and then he took part in military operations against partisans. So, in the battle near the village of Zadora, two people's avengers were killed. And then there were punitive operations in the villages of Novaya Zhelcha, Stolp, Sikovitsy, Dubok, and a round-up in Novy Aksovo. By the way, during the last five were destroyed, as Leonty Andreevich will write later in his letter, "the so-called partisans." As for the attack on Domkino, the forced defense of their property and livestock, which Tisler wrote about, none of the defendants and witnesses even mentioned this in the case.
Unfortunately, Tisler did not explain in his letter why he, along with other punishers, when the front began to approach Strugi Krasny, leaving his rifles, disappeared into the deep German rear. On the territory of Estonia, in the end, he was found and detained. Having carefully considered all the materials, including testimonies, the prosecutor's office admitted that "citizen Tisler was convicted reasonably and is not subject to rehabilitation."
That may have ended the matter, if not for a new letter, which was sent to the archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation for the Pskov region on January 22, 1998. Here it is:
“I, Tisler Leonty Andreevich, was born on January 8, 1925 in the village of Domkino-1, Strugokrasnensky district Leningrad region. I am turning to you with a question: do you have documents proving that I worked in the village of Domkino-1 as a headman from June 28, 1941 to August 30, 1943? I wrote about this to the St. Petersburg archive, from where I was informed in response on December 23, 1997 that there were no such documents there, and they sent me to the archive of the FSB department for the Pskov region. Please tell me what documents are in the archive ... "
And the state machine started working again. An archival certificate was sent to the city of Viljandi, where Tisler lives, which confirmed that “in Pskov, the FSB of Russia in the Pskov region has an archival criminal case against Tisler Leonty Andreevich, who was convicted by the military tribunal of the troops of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Pskov region on January 11, 1951 under Art. 58-1 "a" to 25 years in prison, which states that from June 1942 to August 1943 Tisler L.A. served as headman in the village of Domkino-1.
A year has passed, and again a letter arrives in Pskov from the restless Leonty Andreevich. He thanked the department for the assistance provided, but immediately complained that the archival certificate did not say anything about the fact that, while working as a headman, he received ... money.
“...Here this is not taken into account in the work experience, because supposedly the position was voluntary and free, where there was no monthly and annual salary, that is, a salary. I explain, - Tisler continued, - that no one would go for free two or three times a month to an area 50 km away one way. I received from the agricultural commandant's office 120... or 130 marks a month, I don't remember the exact figure. Therefore, my request to you will be this: ...confirm that I was paid for this work. Then I hope to get an increase in ... pension.
After such a frank confession, it becomes completely clear where Tisler's persistence comes from. What does he ultimately achieve?
In the early 1990s, when illegally repressed citizens were being rehabilitated en masse, Leonty Andreevich tried to demand forgiveness for his betrayal. But time has passed, the political situation has changed, and Tiesler already considers it possible to turn to the archives again with a request to confirm this time his ... police experience (!!!), maybe he will be able to bargain for an increase in his pension - a makeweight for those thirty pieces of silver that he regularly received from the Nazis. That is why the former policeman immediately remembered the “honestly earned” occupation stamps, from which, by the way, he categorically denied during interrogations in 1950.
Now it is hardly possible to get an intelligible answer to the question: why, having felt the imminent decline of his police career in 1943, he threw down his rifle and fled from the EKA to the territory of Estonia, and when he was drafted into the ranks of the Soviet Army, hid that he served the Nazis. Yes, Tisler did take part in the hostilities and already in Soviet time, having served time for his betrayal, he enjoyed all the rights of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War! But times have changed, and he is already trying to get documentary evidence that, being an active accomplice of the Nazis, he received monetary allowances for his zeal. That is why Tisler again asked to send documents, where he asked to indicate that "he served in the police of the Strugokrasnensky district from October 1942 to August 1943, since he needed the document to present it to officials of state bodies." The answer prepared by the head of the unit V. A. Ivanov was laconic:
“Dear Leonty Andreevich! In response to your application, we inform you that the issuance of certificates and extracts from archival criminal cases, in accordance with Article 11 of the RSFSR Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions”, is carried out if the persons involved in the case are rehabilitated, therefore it is not possible to fulfill your request ".
National legions: 14 Turkestan, 8 Azerbaijani, 7 North Caucasian, 8 Georgian, 8 Armenian, 7 Volga-Tatar battalions
Volga-Tatar Legion ("Idel-Ural")
The formal ideological basis of the legion was the fight against Bolshevism and the Jews, while the German side deliberately spread rumors about the possible creation of the Idel-Ural Republic.
Since the end of 1942, an underground organization has been operating in the legion, which set as its goal the internal ideological decomposition of the legion. The underground printed anti-fascist leaflets distributed among the legionnaires.
For participation in an underground organization on August 25, 1944, 11 Tatar legionnaires were guillotined in the Plötzensee military prison in Berlin.
The actions of the Tatar underground led to the fact that of all the national battalions, it was the Tatars who were the most unreliable for the Germans, and it was they who fought the least against the Soviet troops.
Cossack camp (Kosakenlager)
Military organization during the Great Patriotic War, which united the Cossacks in the Wehrmacht and the SS.
In October 1942, in Novocherkassk, occupied by German troops, with the permission of the German authorities, a Cossack gathering was held, at which the headquarters of the Don Cossacks was elected. The organization of Cossack formations as part of the Wehrmacht begins, both in the occupied territories and in the emigrant environment. The Cossacks took an active part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944.
Warsaw, August 1944. Nazi Cossacks suppress the Polish uprising. In the center is Major Ivan Frolov along with other officers. The soldier on the right, judging by the stripes, belongs to the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) of General Vlasov.
In October 1942, in Novocherkassk, occupied by German troops, with the permission of the German authorities, a Cossack gathering was held, at which the headquarters of the Don Cossacks was elected. The organization of Cossack formations as part of the Wehrmacht begins, both in the occupied territories and in the emigrant environment.
Georgian Legion (Die Georgische Legion)
Connection of the Reichswehr, later the Wehrmacht. The legion existed from 1915 to 1917 and from 1941 to 1945.
At its first creation, it was staffed by volunteers from among the Georgians who were captured during the 1st World War. During the Second World War, the legion was replenished with volunteers from among the Soviet prisoners of war of Georgian nationality.
From the participation of Georgians and other Caucasians in other units, a special detachment for propaganda and sabotage "Bergman" - "Highlander" is known, which consisted of 300 Germans, 900 Caucasians and 130 Georgian emigrants, who constituted a special unit of the Abwehr "Tamara II", founded in Germany in March 1942.
The unit included agitators and consisted of 5 companies: 1st, 4th, 5th Georgian; 2nd North Caucasian; 3rd - Armenian.
Since August 1942, "Bergman" - "Highlander" acted in the Caucasian theater - carried out sabotage and agitation in the Soviet rear in the Grozny and Ishchersk directions, in the area of Nalchik, Mozdok and Mineralnye Vody. During the period of fighting in the Caucasus, 4 rifle companies were formed from defectors and prisoners - Georgian, North Caucasian, Armenian and mixed, four cavalry squadrons - 3 North Caucasian and 1 Georgian.
Latvian SS Volunteer Legion
This formation was part of the SS troops, and was formed from two SS divisions: the 15th Grenadier and the 19th Grenadier. In 1942, the Latvian civil administration, in order to help the Wehrmacht, offered the German side to create on a volunteer basis armed forces with a total strength of 100 thousand people, with the condition that Latvia's independence be recognized after the end of the war. Hitler rejected this offer. In February 1943, after the defeat of the German troops near Stalingrad, the Nazi command decided to form the Latvian national units as part of the SS.
On March 28 in Riga, each legionnaire took an oath:
"In the name of God, I solemnly promise in the fight against the Bolsheviks unlimited obedience to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Germany, Adolf Hitler, and for this promise, as a brave warrior, I am always ready to give my life."
As a result, in May 1943, on the basis of six Latvian police battalions (16th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 24th and 26th) operating as part of Army Group North, the Latvian SS Volunteer Brigade was organized as part of the 1st and 2nd Latvian volunteer regiments. The division was directly involved in punitive actions against Soviet citizens in the territories of the Leningrad and Novgorod regions. In 1943, parts of the division participated in punitive operations against Soviet partisans in the areas of the cities of Nevel, Opochka and Pskov (3 km from Pskov, they shot 560 people).
The servicemen of the Latvian SS divisions also participated in the brutal murders of captured Soviet soldiers, including women.
Capturing prisoners, the German scoundrels staged a bloody massacre over them. According to reports, the brutal massacre of wounded Soviet soldiers and officers was carried out by soldiers and officers of one of the battalions of the 43rd Infantry Regiment of the 19th Latvian SS Division. And so on in Poland, Belarus.
20th SS Grenadier Division (1st Estonian)
In accordance with the charter of the SS troops, recruitment was carried out on a voluntary basis, and those who wished to serve in this unit had to meet the requirements of the SS troops for health and ideological reasons. .It was allowed to accept the Baltic states to serve in the Wehrmacht and create from them special teams and volunteer battalions for anti-partisan struggle.
On October 1, 1942, the entire Estonian police force consisted of 10.4 thousand people, to which 591 Germans were seconded.
According to archival documents of the German command of that period, the 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade, together with other units of the German army, carried out punitive operations "Heinrik" and "Fritz" to eliminate Soviet partisans in the Polotsk-Nevel-Idritsa-Sebezh region, which were carried out in October -December 1943.
Turkestan Legion
The formation of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, which was part of the Eastern Legion and consisting of volunteer representatives of the Turkic peoples of the republics of the USSR and Central Asia (Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Kyrgyz, Uyghurs, Tatars, Kumyks, etc.). The Turkestan Legion was created on November 15, 1941 under the 444th Security Division in the form of the Legion, they were not homogeneous in ethnic composition - in addition to the natives of Turkestan, Azerbaijanis and representatives of the North Caucasian peoples also served in it. At the end of the war, the Turkestan Legion joined the Eastern Turkic SS unit (numbering - 8 thousand).
North Caucasian Legion of the Wehrmacht (Nordkaukasische Legion), later the 2nd Turkestan Legion.
Armenian Legion (Armenische Legion)
The formation of the Wehrmacht, which consisted of representatives of the Armenian people.
The military goal of this formation was the state independence of Armenia from the Soviet Union. Armenian legionnaires were part of 11 battalions, as well as other units. The total number of legionnaires reached 18 thousand people.
Retired Major General Vorobyov Vladimir Nikiforovich, veteran of the Great Patriotic War and military intelligence, chairman of the Military Scientific Society at the state cultural and leisure institution "Central House of Officers of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus" (until 2012) writes:
"Today, the conscious and deliberate falsification of the results of the Second World War and the Second World War in general, historical victories The Soviet people and their Red Army has increased significantly. The goal is obvious - to take away the Great Victory from us, to consign to oblivion those atrocities and atrocities that were committed by the Nazis and their accomplices, traitors and traitors to their homeland: Vlasov, Bandera, Caucasian and Baltic punishers. Today their barbarism is justified by the "struggle for freedom", "national independence". It looks blasphemous when the unfinished SS men from the Galicia division are in law, receive additional pensions, and their families are exempted from paying for housing and communal services. The day of the liberation of Lviv - July 27 was declared "a day of mourning and enslavement by the Moscow regime." Alexander Nevsky Street was renamed Andriy Sheptytsky, Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who in 1941 blessed the 14th Army to fight the Red Army. Grenadier division SS "Galicia".
Today, the Baltic countries demand billions of dollars from Russia for "Soviet occupation". But have they really forgotten that the Soviet Union did not occupy them, but saved the honor of all three Baltic states from the inevitable fate of being part of the defeated Nazi coalition, gave them the honor to become part of the general system of the countries that defeated fascism. Lithuania in 1940 received back, previously selected by Poland, the Vilna region with the capital Vilnius. Forgotten! It is also forgotten that the Baltic countries since 1940. By 1991, to create their new infrastructure, they received from the Soviet Union (in today's prices) 220 billion dollars.
With the help of the Soviet Union, they created a unique high-tech production, built new power plants, incl. and nuclear, which provides 62% of all energy consumed, ports and ferries (3 billion dollars), airfields (Siauliai - 1 billion dollars), created a new merchant navy, built oil pipelines, completely gasified their countries. Forgotten! The events of January 1942, when traitors to the Motherland on June 3, 1944 burned to the ground the village of Pirgupis and also the village of Raseiniai, were forgotten. The village of Audrini in Latvia, where today the NATO air force base, suffered the same fate: 42 courtyards of the village, together with the inhabitants, were literally wiped off the face of the earth. The Rezekne police, led by a beast in the guise of a man Eichelis, already by July 20, 1942, managed to exterminate 5128 residents of Jewish nationality.
Latvian "fascist riflemen" from the SS troops annually on March 16 arrange a procession with a solemn march. A marble monument was erected to the executioner Echelis. For what? Former punishers, SS men from the 20th Estonian division and Estonian policemen, who became famous for the total extermination of Jews, thousands of Belarusians and Soviet partisans, every year on July 6 parade with banners around Tallinn, and celebrate the day of the liberation of their capital - September 22, 1944, like a day of mourning. Former SS Colonel Rebane, a granite monument was erected, to which children are brought to lay flowers. The monuments to our generals, liberators have long been destroyed, the graves of our brothers-in-arms patriots have been desecrated. In Latvia, in 2005, the vandals, unrestrained by impunity, already thrice (!) mocked the graves of the fallen soldiers of the Red Army.
Why, why do they desecrate the graves of the heroes-soldiers of the Red Army, destroy their marble slabs, kill them a second time? The West, the UN, the Security Council, Israel are silent, they are not taking any measures. Meanwhile, the Nuremberg Trials 11/20/1945-10/01/1946. for carrying out a conspiracy against Peace, humanity and the gravest war crimes, he sentenced Nazi war criminals not to be shot, but to be hanged. On December 12, 1946, the UN General Assembly upheld the validity of the sentence. Forgotten! Today in some countries of the CIS there is an exaltation, glorification of criminals, punishers and traitors. May 9 is a historical day, the day of the Great Victory is no longer celebrated - a working day, and even worse, a “day of mourning”.
The time has come to give a resolute rebuff to these deeds, not to praise, but to expose all those who, with weapons in their hands, became servants of the Nazis, committed atrocities, destroyed the elderly, women and children. The time has come to tell the truth about collaborators, enemy military, police units, traitors and traitors to the Motherland.
Betrayal and betrayal always and everywhere caused feelings of disgust and indignation, especially betrayal of the previously given oath, the military oath. These betrayals, the oath of crime, have no statute of limitations."
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