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In some historical studies, it is argued that on the side of Hitler 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 terms, 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 named policemen.
FOLLOWING THE HERMACHT
They appeared after the invaders. The Wehrmacht soldiers, capturing one or another Soviet village, under the hot hand shot all those who did not have time to hide from the intruders: Jews, party and Soviet workers, family members of the commanders of the Red Army.
Having done their vile deed, the soldiers in gray uniforms marched further east. Auxiliary units and the German military police remained to maintain the "new order" in the occupied territory. Naturally, the Germans did not know the local realities and were poorly guided by what was happening in the territory they controlled.
Belarusian policemen
In order to successfully carry out the duties assigned to them, 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 like?
So, the Auxiliary Police (Hilfspolizei) was created by the German occupation administration in the occupied territories from persons who were considered supporters of the new government. The respective units were not independent and were subordinate to the German police departments. Local administrations (city and village 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 were not provided for members of the auxiliary police. As a rule, policemen wore armbands with the inscription Polizei, but their shape was arbitrary (for example, they could wear Soviet military uniforms with the insignia removed).
The police recruited from the citizens of the USSR made up almost 30% of all local collaborators. The police were one of the most despised type of collaborators by our people. And there were good enough 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
Of whom was this "auxiliary police" most often formed? Representatives of, relatively speaking, five categories of the population, different in their goals and views, went into it.
The first is the so-called "ideological" opponents of the Soviet regime. Among them were predominantly former White Guards and criminals convicted under the so-called political articles of the then Criminal Code. They perceived the arrival of the Germans as an opportunity to take revenge on the "commissars and Bolsheviks" for past grievances.
In addition, Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists were given the opportunity to kill plenty of "damned Muscovites and Jews."
The second category is those who, under any political regime, try to stay afloat, gain power and the opportunity to plunder and mock their own compatriots to their fullest. Often, representatives of the first category did not deny that they went to the police in order to combine the motive of revenge with the ability to fill their pockets with other people's property.
Here, for example, is a fragment from the testimony of police officer Ogryzkin, given by him to representatives of the Soviet punitive organs in 1944 in Bobruisk:
“I went to cooperate with the Germans because I considered myself offended by the Soviet regime. Before the revolution, my family had a lot of property and a workshop, which brought in a good income.<...>I thought that the Germans, as a cultured European nation, want to free Russia from Bolshevism and restore the old order. Therefore, I accepted the offer to join the police.
<...>The police had the highest salaries and a good ration, in addition, there was an opportunity to use their official position for personal enrichment ... "
As an illustration, we will cite another document - a fragment of the testimony of policeman Grunsky during the trial of the traitors to the Motherland in Smolensk (autumn 1944).
“... Having voluntarily agreed to cooperate with the Germans, I just wanted to survive. Fifty to one hundred people died in the camp every day. Becoming a volunteer was the only way to 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 a fresh Soviet uniform, but with German patches and a mandatory bandage on the shoulder ... "
I must say that the police themselves understood perfectly well that their life depended on the situation at the front, and tried to use every opportunity to drink, eat, hug the local widows and rob them.
During one of the feasts, the deputy chief of the police of the Sapych volost of the Pogarsky district of the Bryansk region, Ivan Raskin, made a toast, from which, according to eyewitnesses of this drinking party, those present looked up 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 we will still have our heads ripped off ”.
"FAITHFUL, BRAVE, OBEYED"
Among the policemen, there was also a special group of those who were especially fiercely hated by the inhabitants of the occupied Soviet territories. We are talking about employees of the so-called security battalions. They had blood on their hands up to the elbows! On account of the punitive forces from these battalions, hundreds of thousands of ruined human lives.
For reference, it should be explained that the special police units were the so-called Schutzmann-schaft (German Schutzmann-schaft - security team, abbreviated Schuma) - punitive battalions operating under the command of the Germans and together with other German units. Members of the Schutzmann Shafts wore German military uniforms, but with special insignia: a swastika in a laurel wreath on the headdress, a swastika in a laurel wreath on the left sleeve with the motto in German "Tgei Tapfer Gehorsam" - "Faithful, brave, obedient."
Policemen at work of executioners
Each battalion in the state was supposed to have five hundred people, including nine Germans. In total, eleven Belarusian Schuma battalions, one artillery battalion, and one Schuma cavalry battalion were formed. At the end of February 1944, there were 2,167 people in these units.
More Ukrainian battalions of the Schuma police were created: fifty-two in Kiev, twelve in Western Ukraine and two in the Chernihiv region, with a total strength of 35 thousand people. No Russian battalions were 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 - murder, murder and murder again. And the policemen killed everyone, regardless of gender and age.
Here's a typical example. In Bila Tserkva, not far from Kiev, the "Sonderkommando 4-a" of SS Standartenfuehrer Paul Blombel operated. 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 an altercation, the Sonderkommando officers killed everyone over seven years old.
Only about 90 young children survived, ranging in age from a few months to five, six or seven years. Even experienced German 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 Jewish children be destroyed by German lackeys - local Ukrainian policemen.
From the memoirs of an eyewitness, a German from this Ukrainian Schuma:
“The Wehrmacht soldiers have already dug the grave. The children were taken there on a tractor. The technical side of the matter did not concern me. The Ukrainians stood around and shivered. The children were unloaded from the tractor. They were put 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 not forget this sight for the rest of my life. It is in front of my eyes all the time. I especially remember the little blonde girl who took my hand. Then they shot her too. "
SHOWER LIPS ON "TOUR"
However, the punishers from the Ukrainian punitive battalions "distinguished themselves" 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 the Ukrainian policemen from the 118th police battalion.
This punitive unit was created in June 1942 in Kiev from among the former members of the Kiev and Bukovina kurens of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Almost all of its personnel was staffed by former commanders or privates of the Red Army who were captured 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 occupiers, taking an active part in mass shootings in Kiev, in the notorious Babi Yar.
Grigory Vasyura - the executioner of Khatyn (photo taken shortly before the execution by the court verdict)
On March 22, 1943, the 118th security police battalion 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 shed.
With the butts of machine guns, they lifted the sick and the elderly out of bed, and did not spare women with small children and babies.
When all the people were gathered in the barn, the punishers locked the doors, surrounded the barn with straw, poured gasoline over the barn and set it on fire. The wooden shed quickly caught fire. Under the pressure of dozens of human bodies, the doors could not stand it and collapsed.
In burning clothes, seized with horror, gasping for breath, people rushed to run, but those who burst out of the flames were shot from machine guns. The fire burned down 149 villagers, including 75 children under the age of sixteen. The village itself was completely destroyed.
The chief of staff of the 118th battalion of the security police was Grigory Vasyura, who solely directed the battalion and its actions.
The further fate of the Khatyn executioner is interesting. When the 118th battalion was defeated, Vasyura continued his service in the 14th SS Grenadier Division "Galicia", and at the very end of the war - in the 76th Infantry Regiment, which was defeated 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 Kiev 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 amnesty for Soviet citizens who collaborated with the invaders during the 1941-1945 war," and Vasyura was released. He returned to his native Cherkasy region. The KGB officers nevertheless found and arrested the criminal again.
By that time, he was already no less than a deputy director of one of the large state farms near Kiev. Vasyura was very fond of speaking before 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 Kiev.
From November to December 1986, the trial of Grigory Vasyura took place in Minsk. Fourteen volumes of case 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 killed more than 360 peaceful women, old people, 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 out 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 mass killings, began to go to the partisan detachments, taking their service weapons with them. According to Soviet historians, in the central part of the USSR, by the time of liberation, partisan detachments consisted of an average of one-fifth of the policemen-deserters at the time of liberation.
Here is what was written in the report of the Leningrad headquarters of the partisan movement:
“In September 1943, agent workers and intelligence officers deployed more than ten enemy garrisons, ensured the transition to the partisans of up to a thousand people ... Intelligence officers and agents of the 1st partisan brigade in November 1943 deployed six enemy garrisons in the settlements of Batori, Lokot, Terentino , Polovo and sent more than eight hundred of them to the partisan brigade. "
There were also cases of mass transitions of entire detachments of persons who collaborated with the Nazis to the side of the partisans.
On August 16, 1943, the commander of "Druzhina No. 1", a former lieutenant colonel of the Red Army Gil-Rodionov, and 2,200 fighters who were under his command, having shot all the Germans and especially anti-Soviet commanders beforehand, moved to the partisans.
The "1st Anti-Fascist Partisan Brigade" was formed from the former "vigilantes", 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 weapons 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 heavy losses - out of 1413 soldiers, 1026 people were killed.
Well, when the Red Army arrived, 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 quick, but fair. The punishers and executioners who managed to escape were searched for by the competent authorities for a long time.
INSTEAD OF EPILOGUE. EX-PUNISHER-VETERAN
Interesting and unusual is the fate of the woman punisher, known as Tonka the machine gunner.
Antonina Makarovna Makarova, a Muscovite, served in 1942-1943 with the famous Nazi accomplice Bronislav Kaminsky, who later became an SS Brigadefuehrer (Major General). Makarova acted as an executioner in the "Lokotsky District of Self-Government" 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 changed. Usually I was ordered to shoot a group of 27 people - as many partisans were contained in a cell. I shot about 500 meters from the prison near some pit.
The arrested were put in a chain facing the pit. One of the men was rolling out my machine gun to the place of execution. At the command of my superiors, I knelt down and fired at people until everyone fell dead ... ”- she later said during interrogations.
“I didn’t know those whom I shoot. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. Sometimes, you shoot, come closer, and some still twitch. Then she again shot in the head so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes a piece of plywood with the inscription "partisan" was hung on the chest of several prisoners. Some 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 ... "
She often had to shoot people with entire families, including children.
After the war, she lived happily for another thirty-three years, got married, became a labor veteran and an honorary citizen of her town of Lepel in the Vitebsk region of Belarus. Her husband was also a participant in the war, was awarded orders and medals. Two grown 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 investigators to find her trail. She confessed to her crimes. In 1978, at the age of fifty-five, Tonka the machine-gunner was shot by a court sentence.
Oleg SEMENOV, journalist (St. Petersburg), newspaper "Top secret"
In fact, we know little about the Great Patriotic War and many of its events remain unknown to many ordinary people. Nevertheless, it is our duty to remember what was happening at that terrible time in order to prevent a repetition of the senseless death of millions of people. This post will shed light on one of the many episodes of the Second World War, about which not everyone knows.
In 1944, on the orders of Himmler, the formation of a special unit - "Jagdferbandt", began from various anti-partisan and punitive units. Groups "Ost" and "West" operated in the western and eastern directions. Plus a special team - Yangengeinzak Russland und Gezand. It also included "Yagdferbandt-Pribaltikum".
She specialized in terrorist activities in the Baltic countries, which after the occupation were divided into general districts: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The latter also included Pskov, Novgorod, Luga, Slantsy - the entire territory up to Leningrad.
The elementary cell of this peculiar pyramid was the "anti-partisan group", which recruited those who were ready to sell themselves to the Germans for a can of stew.
Armed with Soviet weapons, sometimes dressed in Red Army uniforms with insignia in their collar tabs, the bandits entered the village. If they came across policemen along the way, the "guests" would ruthlessly shoot them. Then questions like "how can we find" ours "began?
There were simple-minded people ready to help strangers, and then what happened next:
“On December 31, 1943, two guys came to our village of Stega and began to ask the local residents how they could find the partisans. The girl Zina, who lived in the village of Stega, said that she had such a connection.
At the same time, she indicated where the partisans were located. These guys soon left, and the next day a punitive squad rushed into the village ...
They surrounded the village, drove all the inhabitants out of their homes and then divided them into groups. The old people and children were herded into the barnyard, and the young girls were escorted to the station to be sent to forced labor. Punishers set fire to the barnyard, where the population was driven there: mostly old people and children.
Among them were my grandmother and my two cousins: 10 and 6 years old. People shouted and asked for mercy, then the punishers entered the courtyard and started shooting at everyone who was there. I alone managed to escape from our family.
The next day, I, along with a group of citizens from the village of Stega, who worked on the road, walked to the place where the barnyard used to be. There we saw the corpses of burned women and children. Many lay hugging ...
Two weeks later, the punishers perpetrated the same reprisals against the inhabitants of the villages of Glushnevo and Suslovo, which were also destroyed along with all the inhabitants "- from the testimony of the witness Pavel Grabovsky (born in 1928), a native of the village of Grabovo, Maryn village council of the Ashevsky district; letter case No. 005/5 "Sov. secret ").
According to eyewitnesses, a detachment under the command of a certain Martynovsky and his closest assistant Reshetnikov was especially atrocious in the Pskov region. On the trail of the last of the punishers, the Chekists managed to get out many years after the end of the war (criminal case No.A-15511).
In the early 1960s, one of the residents of the region applied to the regional KGB department. Driving through some half-station, she recognized in a modest lineman ... a punisher who took part in the execution of civilians in her native village during the war. And although the train stopped only a few minutes, she had enough glance to understand: he!
So the investigators met a certain Gerasimov, nicknamed Pashka-Sailor, who at the very first interrogation confessed that he was part of an anti-partisan detachment.
"Yes, I took part in the executions," Gerasimov was indignant at interrogations, "But I was only an executor."
“In May 1944, our detachment was stationed in the village of Zhaguli, Drissensky District, Vitebsk Region.
At the same time, we captured a large group of civilians who were hiding in the forest. They were mostly elderly women. There were also children.
Upon learning that Pshik was killed, Martynovsky ordered to divide the prisoners into two parts. After that, pointing to one of them, he ordered: "Shoot for the memory of the soul!"
Someone ran into the forest and found a hole, where they later took the people. After that, Reshetnikov began to select the punishers to carry out the order. At the same time, he named Pashka-Sailor, Narets Oscar, Nikolai Frolov ...
They took people into the forest, put them in front of the pit, and they themselves stood a few meters away. Martynovsky at this time was sitting on a stump, not far from the place of execution.
I stood nearby and told him that he could get caught from the Germans for unauthorized actions, to which Martynovsky replied that he did not care about the Germans and he just needed to keep his mouth shut.
After that he said: "Igorek, to the point!" And Reshetnikov gave the order: "Fire!" After that, the punishers started shooting. Pushing the punishers aside, Gerasimov made his way to the edge of the pit and, shouting "Polundra!"
Martynovsky himself did not participate in the execution, but Reshetnikov tried "- from the testimony of Vasily Terekhov, one of the soldiers of Martynovsky's detachment; criminal case No. A-15511.
Not wanting to be responsible for the "deeds" of the traitors, Pashka-Moryak handed over his "colleagues" with giblets. The first one he named was a certain Igor Reshetnikov, Martynovsky's right hand, whom the operatives soon found behind barbed wire in one of the camps located near Vorkuta.
It immediately became clear that he had received his 25 years of imprisonment for ... espionage in favor of a foreign state. As it turned out, after the surrender of Germany, Reshetnikov ended up in the American zone, where he was recruited by intelligence. In the fall of 1947, on a special mission, he was transported to the Soviet occupation zone.
For this, the new patrons promised him a residence permit overseas, but SMERSH intervened in the matter, whose employees figured out the traitor. A speedy court determined the punishment for him.
Once in the far north, Reshetnikov decided that his punitive past would no longer be remembered and he would be released with a clean passport. However, his hopes were dashed when a kind of greetings from the distant past were conveyed to him by his former subordinate - Pashka-Moryak.
In the end, under the pressure of irrefutable evidence, Reshetnikov began to testify, omitting, however, his personal involvement in punitive actions.
For the dirtiest work, the Germans looked for assistants, as a rule, among the declassed elements and criminals. A certain Martynovsky, a Pole by birth, was ideally suited for this role. After leaving the camp in 1940, being deprived of the right to live in Leningrad, he settled in Luga.
After waiting for the arrival of the Nazis, he voluntarily offered them his services. He was immediately sent to a special school, after which he received the rank of lieutenant in the Wehrmacht.
For some time Martynovsky served at the headquarters of one of the punitive units in Pskov, and then the Germans, noticing his zeal, instructed him to form an anti-partisan group.
At the same time, Igor Reshetnikov, who returned from prison on June 21, 1941, joined her. An important detail: his father also went to serve the Germans, becoming burgomaster of the city of Luga.
According to the plan of the invaders, Martynovsky's gang was supposed to impersonate partisans of other formations. They had to penetrate into the areas of active actions of the people's avengers, conduct reconnaissance, destroy patriots, under the guise of partisans, to raid and plunder the local population.
To disguise their leaders had to know the names and surnames of the leaders of large partisan formations. For each successful operation, the bandits were generously paid, so the gang worked off the occupation marks not for fear, but for conscience.
In particular, with the help of Martynovsky's gang, several partisan appearances were uncovered in the Sebezhsky district. At the same time, in the village of Chornaya Gryaz, Reshetnikov personally shot and killed Konstantin Fish, the head of intelligence of one of the Belarusian partisan brigades, who was going to establish contact with his Russian neighbors.
In November 1943, the bandits went on the trail of two groups of scouts at once, abandoned to the rear from the "mainland". They managed to surround one of them, which was headed by Captain Rumyantsev.
The fight was uneven. The scout Nina Donkukova wounded Martynovsky with the last cartridge, but was captured and sent to the local Gestapo office. The girl was tortured for a long time, but having achieved nothing, the Germans brought her to Martynovsky's detachment, giving her "to be devoured by the wolves."
From the testimony of the false partisans:
"On March 9, 1942, in the village of Elemno, Sabutitsky s / council, traitors to our people Igor Reshetnikov from Luga and Ivanov Mikhail from the village of Vysokaya Griva chose Boris (born 1920), a resident of Elemno Fedorov, as a target for shooting. He died as a result.
In the village of Klobutitsy, the Klobutitsky s / council, on September 17, 1942, 12 women and 3 men were shot just for the fact that a railway was blown up in the immediate vicinity of the village "
“There was such a guy in our detachment - Petrov Vasily. During the war he served as an officer and, as it turned out, was connected with the partisans.
He wanted to lead the detachment into the partisans and save them from treason. Reshetnikov found out about this and told everything to Martynovsky. Together they killed this Vasily. They also shot his family: his wife and daughter. This was, I think, on November 7, 1943. Little felt boots struck me then ... "
“There was also such a case: when, during one of the operations near Polotsk ... partisans attacked us. We retreated. Reshetnikov suddenly appeared. He began to swear, shout at us.
Here, in my presence ... he shot and killed the nurse and Viktor Aleksandrov, who served in my platoon. By order of Reshetnikov, a 16-year-old teenage girl was raped. This was done by his orderly Mikhail Alexandrov.
Reshetnikov then said to him: come on, I will remove 10 punishments for this. Later, Reshetnikov shot and killed his mistress Maria Pankratova. He killed her in the bath out of jealousy "- from the testimony at the trial of Pavel Gerasimov (Sailor); criminal case No. А-15511.
The fate of the women of those places where the detachment passed was truly terrible. Occupying the village, the bandits chose the most beautiful concubines for themselves.
They had to wash, sew, prepare food, satisfy the lust of this ever-drunk crew. And when she changed her place of deployment, this peculiar female convoy, as a rule, was shot and in the new place they recruited new victims.
“On May 21, 1944, a punitive detachment was moving from the village of Kokhanovichi through Sukhorukovo to our village - Bichigovo. I was not at home, and my family lived in a hut near the cemetery. They were found, and my daughter was taken with them to the village of Vidoki.
The mother began to look for her daughter, went to Vidoki, but there was an ambush and she was killed. Then I went, and my daughter, it turns out, was beaten, tortured, raped and killed. I found her only along the edge of the dress: the grave was poorly buried.
In Vidoki, punishers caught children, women, old people, drove them into a bathhouse and burned them. When I was looking for my daughter, I was present as the bathhouse was being dismantled: 30 people died there "- from the testimony of the witness Pavel Kuzmich Sauluk; criminal case No.A-15511.
Nadezhda Borisevich is one of the many victims of werewolves.
So gradually the tangle of bloody crimes of this gang, which began its inglorious path near Luga, was gradually unraveling. Then there were punitive actions in the Pskov, Ostrovsky, Pytalovsky regions.
At Novorzhev, the chastisers fell into a partisan ambush and were almost completely destroyed by the 3rd partisan brigade under the command of Alexander German.
However, the ringleaders - Martynovsky himself and Reshetnikov - managed to leave. Having abandoned their subordinates in the cauldron, they came to their German masters, expressing a desire to continue the service not for fear, but for conscience. So the newly formed team of traitors ended up in the Sebezhsky region, and then on the territory of Belarus.
After the summer offensive of 1944, which resulted in the liberation of Pskov, this imaginary partisan detachment reached Riga itself, where the headquarters of "Yagdferbandt-OST" was located.
Here YAGDband Martynovsky - Reshetnikova amazed even its owners with pathological drunkenness and licentiousness. For this reason, in the fall of the same year, this rabble was sent to the small Polish town of Hohensaltz, where he began to master sabotage training.
Somewhere along the way, Reshetnikov dealt with Martynovsky and his family: a two-year-old son, wife and mother-in-law, who followed with the detachment.
According to Gerasimov, "they were buried in a ditch near the house where they lived that very night. Then one of ours named Krot brought gold that belonged to the Martynovskys."
When the Germans missed their henchman, Reshetnikov explained what had happened by the fact that he allegedly tried to escape, so he was forced to act according to the laws of wartime.
For this and other "feats" the Nazis awarded Reshetnikov the title of SS Hauptsturmführer, awarded him the Iron Cross and ... sent to suppress the resistance in Croatia and Hungary.
They were also preparing for work in the deep Soviet rear. For this purpose, parachuting was studied especially carefully. However, the rapid advance of the Soviet army confused all the plans of this motley team of German special forces.
This gang ended its "combat path" ingloriously: in the spring of 1945, surrounded by Soviet tanks, almost all of it died, unable to break through to the main forces of the Germans.
The exception was only a few people, among whom was Reshetnikov himself.
In contact with
Fritz Schmedes and 72nd SS Regiment Commander Erich Buchmann survived the war and later lived in West Germany. Another regiment commander, Ewald Ehlers, did not live to see the end of the war. According to Karl Gerber, Ehlers, who was distinguished by incredible cruelty, was hanged by his own subordinates on May 25, 1945, while his group was in the Halb cauldron.
Gerber heard the story of Ehlers' execution when he and other SS men were escorted to the Soviet prisoner of war camp in Sagan.
It is not known how the head of the operations department, Kurt Weisse, ended his life. Shortly before the end of the war, he changed into the uniform of a corporal of the Wehrmacht and mixed with the soldiers. As a result, he ended up in British captivity, from where he made a successful escape on March 5, 1946. After that, traces of Weisse are lost, and his whereabouts have not been established.
Until today, there is an opinion that a significant part of the 36th SS Division was, in the words of the French researcher J. Bernage, "brutally destroyed by Soviet troops." Of course, there were facts of execution of the SS by Soviet soldiers, but not all of them were executed.
According to the French specialist K. Ingrao, 634 people who had previously served with Dirlewanger managed to survive the Soviet prisoner of war camps and return to their homeland at different times.
However, when talking about Dirlewanger's subordinates who were in Soviet captivity, one should not forget that more than half of the 634 people who managed to return home were members of the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, who were in the SS assault brigade in November 1944 G.
Fritz Schmedes.
Their fate was difficult. 480 people who defected to the side of the Red Army were never released. They were placed in the prisoner camp No. 176 in Focsani (Romania).
Then they were sent to the territory of the Soviet Union - to camps No. 280/2, No. 280/3, No. 280/7, No. 280/18 near Stalino (today - Donetsk), where they, divided into groups, were engaged in coal mining in Makeyevka , Gorlovka, Kramatorsk, Voroshilovsk, Sverdlovsk and Kadievka.
Of course, some of them died from various diseases. The process of returning home began only in 1946 and continued until the mid-1950s.
A certain part of the penalties (groups of 10-20 people) ended up in the camps of Molotov (Perm), Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), Ryazan, Tula and Krasnogorsk.
Another 125 people, mostly communists, worked in the Boksitogorsk camp near Tikhvin (200 km east of Leningrad). MTB authorities checked every communist, someone was released earlier, someone later.
About 20 former members of the Dirlewanger formation subsequently participated in the creation of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR ("Stasi").
And some, like the former convict of the SS penal camp in Dublo-vice, Alfred Neumann, managed to make a political career. He was a member of the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, headed the Ministry of Logistics for several years, and was also Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.
Subsequently, Neumann said that the communist penalties were under special supervision, they did not have the status of prisoners of war until a certain point, since for some time they were considered persons involved in punitive actions.
The fate of convicted members of the SS, the Wehrmacht, criminals and homosexuals who were captured by the Red Army was in many ways similar to the fate of the communist penalties, but before they could be perceived as prisoners of war, competent authorities worked with them, seeking to find war criminals among them.
Some of those who were lucky enough to survive were re-taken into custody after returning to West Germany, including 11 criminals who did not serve their sentences to the end.
As for the traitors from the USSR who served in the special SS battalion, an investigation team was created to search for them in 1947, headed by an investigator for especially important cases of MTB, Major Sergei Panin.
The investigation team worked for 14 years. The result of her work was 72 volumes of the criminal case. On December 13, 1960, the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian SSR opened a criminal case on the facts of atrocities committed by punishers of a special SS battalion under the command of Dirlewanger in the temporarily occupied territory of Belarus.
In this case, in December 1960 - May 1961, KGB officers arrested and prosecuted former SS men A.S. Stopchenko, I.S. Pugachev, V.A.Yalynsky, F.F. Grabarovsky, I.E.Tupigu, G.A.Kirienko, V.R. Zayvyya, A.E. Radkovsky, M.V. Maidanova, L.A. Sakhno, P.A. S. A. Shinkevich.
On October 13, 1961, the trial of the collaborationists began in Minsk. All of them were sentenced to death.
Of course, these were far from all the collaborators who served with Dirlewanger in 1942-1943. But the lives of some ended before the mentioned trial took place in Minsk.
For example, ID Melnichenko, who commanded the unit, after he fought in the partisan brigade named after. Chkalov, at the end of the summer of 1944 he deserted.
Until February 1945, Melnichenko hid in the Murmansk region, and then returned to Ukraine, where he was engaged in theft. Ronzhin, an authorized representative of the Rokitnyanskiy RO of the NKVD, was killed by him.
On July 11, 1945, Melnichenko confessed to the head of the Uzinsky Regional Office of the NKVD. In August 1945 he was sent to the Chernihiv region, to the places where he committed crimes.
During transportation by rail, Melnichenko escaped. On February 26, 1946, he was blocked by officers of the Nosovskiy RO of the NKVD's task force and shot dead during his arrest.
In 1960, the KGB summoned Pyotr Gavrilenko for questioning as a witness. The state security officers did not yet know that he was the commander of the machine-gun section, which carried out the execution of the population in the village of Lesiny in May 1943.
Gavrilenko committed suicide - he jumped out of the window of the third floor of a hotel in Minsk, as a result of a deep emotional shock that occurred after he, together with the Chekists, visited the site of the former village.
The search for Dirlewanger's former subordinates continued further. Soviet justice also wanted to see German penalties in the dock.
Back in 1946, the head of the Belarusian delegation at the 1st session of the UN General Assembly handed over a list of 1200 criminals and their accomplices, including members of the special SS battalion, and demanded their extradition for punishment in accordance with Soviet laws.
But the Western powers did not betray anyone. Subsequently, the Soviet state security bodies established that Heinrich Fayertag, Bartschke, Toll, Kurt Weisse, Johann Zimmermann, Jacob Ted, Otto Laudbach, Willy Zinkad, Rene Ferdehrer, Alfred Zingebel, Semke and Herbert Diez took an active part in the destruction of the population of Belarus Weinhefer.
The listed persons, according to Soviet documents, went to the West and were not punished.
In Germany, several trials were held in which the crimes of the Dirlewanger battalion were considered. One of the first such trials, organized by the Central Office of Justice of the city of Ludwigsburg and the Prosecutor's Office of Hanover, took place in 1960, and during it, among other things, the role of the penalties in the burning of the Belarusian village of Khatyn was clarified.
Insufficient documentary base did not allow bringing the perpetrators to justice. However, even later, in the 1970s, the judiciary did not make much progress in establishing the truth.
The Hannover prosecutor's office, dealing with the Khatyn issue, even doubted whether it could be a question of the murder of the population. In September 1975, the case was transferred to the prosecutor's office in the city of Itzehoe (Schleswig-Holstein). But the search for those responsible for the tragedy was unsuccessful. The testimony of Soviet witnesses did not help either. As a result, at the end of 1975 the case was closed.
Five trials against Heinz Reinefarth, the commander of the SS and police task force in the Polish capital, also ended in vain.
The Flensburg prosecutor's office tried to find out the details of the executions of civilians during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in August - September 1944.
Reinefarth, who by that time had become a member of the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein from the United Party of Germany, denied the participation of the SS in the crimes.
We know his words, spoken before the prosecutor, when the question touched on the activities of the Dirlewanger regiment on Volskaya Street:
“Those who, in the morning of August 5, 1944, set out with 356 soldiers, by the evening of August 7, 1944, had a force of about 40 people who fought for their lives.
The Steingauer's battle group, which existed until August 7, 1944, could hardly carry out such shootings. The battles she fought in the streets were fierce and resulted in heavy casualties.
The same goes for Mayer's battle group. This group was also shackled by the fighting, so it is difficult to imagine that it was engaged in executions contrary to international law. "
Due to the fact that new materials published in the monograph of the historian from Luneburg, Dr. Hans von Crannhals, were discovered, the Flensburg prosecutor's office closed the investigation.
However, despite new documents and the efforts of the Birman prosecutor who reopened the inquiry in this case, Reinefarth was never brought to justice.
The former commander of the task force died quietly at his home in Westland on May 7, 1979. Almost 30 years later, in 2008, journalists from Der Spiegel, who prepared an article about the crimes of the special SS regiment in Warsaw, were forced to state the fact: "In Germany Until now, none of the commanders of this unit has paid for their crimes - neither the officers, nor the soldiers, nor those who were at the same time with them. "
In 2008, journalists also learned that the materials collected on the formation of Dirlewanger, as the deputy head of the Ludwigsburg Center for the Investigation of the Crimes of National Socialists, prosecutor Joachim Riedl, said in an interview, were either never transferred to the prosecutor's office or were not studied, although since 1988, when a new list of persons put on the international wanted list was submitted to the UN, the Center accumulated a lot of information.
As it is now known, the Ludwigsburg administration transferred the materials to the Baden-Württemberg state court, where an investigation team was formed.
As a result of the work, it was possible to find three people who served in the regiment during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. On April 17, 2009, the prosecutor of the GRK Bogoslav Chervinsky said that the Polish side had asked German colleagues for help in bringing these three individuals to justice, since there is no statute of limitations for crimes committed in Poland. But none of the three former penalties have been charged by the German judiciary.
The real participants in the crimes remain at large and calmly live out their days. This, in particular, applies to the anonymous SS veteran, whom the historian Rolf Michaelis managed to interview.
After spending no more than two years in the Nuremberg-Langwasser prisoner of war camp, the anonymous man was released and got a job in Regensburg.
In 1952 he became a school bus driver and then a tour bus driver, and regularly traveled to Austria, Italy and Switzerland. Anonymous retired in 1985. Former poacher died in 2007.
Over the 60 post-war years, he was not brought to justice even once, although it follows from his memoirs that he took part in many punitive actions in Poland and Belarus and killed many people.
Over the years of its existence, SS penalty boxes, according to the authors' estimates, have destroyed about 60 thousand people. This figure, we emphasize, cannot be considered final, since not all documents on this issue have been studied yet.
The history of the formation of Dirlewanger, as in a mirror, reflected in itself the most unsightly and monstrous pictures of the Second World War. This is an example of who can become people who are seized with hatred and embarked on the path of total cruelty, people who have lost their conscience, who do not want to think and bear any responsibility.
More about the gang. Punishers and perverts. 1942 - 1985: http://oper-1974.livejournal.com/255035.html
Kalistros Thielecke (mother-killer), he killed his mother with 17 stab wounds and went to prison and then to the SS Sonderkommando "Dirlewanger".
Karl Jochheim, a member of the Black Front organization, was arrested in the early 1930s and spent 11 years in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. He was amnestied in the fall of 1944 and, among the amnestied political prisoners, was sent to the brigade in Slovakia at that time. Dirlewanger. He survived the war.
Documents of 2 Ukrainians - Poltava resident Pyotr Lavrik and Kharkiv resident Nikolai Novosiletsky, who served with Dirlewanger.
Diary of Ivan Melnichenko, deputy commander of the Ukrainian company Dirlewanger. This page of the diary tells about the anti-partisan operation "Franz", in which Melnichenko commanded a company.
“On December 25.42 I left the town of Mogilev, in the Berezino metro station. I met the New Year well, drank. After the New Year, near the village of Terebolye, there was a battle, from my company, which was in command, Shvets was killed and Ratkovsky was wounded.
It was the most difficult battle, 20 people were wounded from the battalion. We retreated. After 3 days, the Berezino station left for the Cherven district, cleared the forests to Osipovich, the whole team plunged into Osipovichi and left ... "
Rostislav Muravyov, served as a stormführer in a Ukrainian company, survived the war, lived in Kiev and worked as a teacher in a construction college. Arrested and sentenced to VMN in 1970.
Letter from a Dirlewanger from Slovakia.
FPN 01499D
Slovakia, Dec 4, 1944
Dear Herman,
I have just returned from surgery and found your letter dated November 16th. Yes, we must all suffer in this war; my deepest condolences to you on the death of your wife. We just have to keep living until better times.
I am always glad to hear news from Bamberg. The last news we have: our Dirlewanger was awarded the Knight's Cross in October, there were no celebrations, the operations are too difficult, and there is no time for that.
The Slovaks are now openly in alliance with the Russians and in every dirty village there is a nest of partisans. The forests and mountains in the Tatras have made partisans a mortal danger for us.
We work with every newly arrived prisoner. Now I am in a village near Ipoliság. The Russians are very close. The reinforcements we received are worthless, and it would be better if they stayed in the concentration camps.
Yesterday twelve of them went over to the side of the Russians, all of them were old communists, it would be better if all of them were hanged on the gallows. But there are real heroes here and nevertheless.
Well the enemy artillery opens fire again and I have to return. Warm greetings from your son-in-law.
Franz.
A person always has the right to choose. Even in the most terrible moments of your life, at least two decisions remain. Sometimes it is a choice between life and death. A terrible death, allowing to preserve honor and conscience, and a long life in fear that someday it will become known at what price it was bought.
Everyone decides for himself. Those who choose death are no longer destined to explain to others the reasons for their actions. They go into oblivion with the thought that there is no other way, and relatives, friends, descendants will understand this.
Those who bought their lives at the price of betrayal, on the contrary, are very often talkative, find a thousand excuses for their actions, sometimes even write books about it.
Who is right, everyone decides for himself, submitting exclusively to one judge - his own conscience.
Zoya. A girl without compromise
AND Zoya, and Tonya were not born in Moscow. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born in the village of Osinovye Gai in the Tambov region on September 13, 1923. The girl came from a family of priests, and, according to biographers, Zoya's grandfather died at the hands of local Bolsheviks when he began to engage in anti-Soviet agitation among his fellow villagers - he was simply drowned in a pond. Zoya's father, who began his studies at the seminary, did not feel hatred for the Soviets, and decided to change his cassock for a secular attire, marrying a local teacher.
In 1929, the family moved to Siberia, and a year later, thanks to the help of relatives, settled in Moscow. In 1933, Zoe's family experienced a tragedy - her father died. Zoya's mother was left alone with two children - 10-year-old Zoya and 8-year-old Sasha... The children tried to help their mother, Zoya was especially prominent in this.
She studied well at school, was especially fond of history and literature. At the same time, Zoe's character manifested itself quite early - she was a principled and consistent person who did not allow herself to compromise and inconstancy. This position of Zoe caused misunderstanding among classmates, and the girl, in turn, was so worried that she fell ill with a nervous illness.
Zoe's illness also affected her classmates - feeling their guilt, they helped her catch up with the school curriculum so that she would not stay for the second year. In the spring of 1941, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya successfully entered the 10th grade.
The girl who loved history had her own heroine - a school teacher Tatiana Solomakha... During the Civil War, the Bolshevik teacher fell into the hands of whites and was brutally tortured. The story of Tatiana Solomakha shocked Zoya and greatly influenced her.
Tonya. Makarova from the Parfenov family
Antonina Makarova was born in 1921 in the Smolensk region, in the village of Malaya Volkovka, in a large peasant family Makara Parfenova... She studied at a rural school, and it was there that an episode occurred that influenced her future life. When Tonya came to the first grade, because of shyness, she could not give her last name - Parfenova. Classmates began to shout "Yes, she is Makarova!", Meaning that Tony's father's name is Makar.
So, with the light hand of a teacher, at that time almost the only literate person in the village, Tonya Makarova appeared in the Parfenov family.
The girl studied diligently, with diligence. She also had her own revolutionary heroine - Anka the machine gunner... This film image had a real prototype - the nurse of the Chapaevsk division Maria Popova, who once in battle really had to replace the killed machine gunner.
After graduating from school, Antonina went to study in Moscow, where she was caught by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
Both Zoya and Tonya, brought up on Soviet ideals, volunteered to fight the Nazis.
Tonya. In the cauldron
But by the time that on October 31, 1941, the 18-year-old Komsomol member Kosmodemyanskaya came to the assembly point to send saboteurs to the school, the 19-year-old Komsomol member Makarova had already learned all the horrors of the Vyazemsky Cauldron.
After the hardest battles in complete encirclement from the entire unit, next to the young nurse Tonya there was only a soldier Nikolay Fedchuk... With him, she wandered through the local forests, just trying to survive. They didn’t look for partisans, they didn’t try to get through to their own people - they fed themselves with whatever they had to do, sometimes they stole. The soldier did not stand on ceremony with Tonya, making her his "field wife". Antonina did not resist - she just wanted to live.
In January 1942, they went to the village of Krasny Kolodets, and then Fedchuk admitted that he was married, and his family lived nearby. He left Tonya alone.
By the time the 18-year-old Komsomol member Kosmodemyanskaya came to the assembly point to send the saboteurs to the school, the 19-year-old Komsomol member Makarova had already learned all the horrors of the Vyazemsky Cauldron. Photo: wikipedia.org / Bundesarchiv
They did not drive Tonya out of the Red Well, but the local residents were already full of worries. And the strange girl did not strive to go to the partisans, did not rush to break through to ours, but strove to twist love with one of the men who remained in the village. Having turned the locals against herself, Tonya was forced to leave.
When Tony's wanderings ended, Zoe was gone. The history of her personal battle with the Nazis turned out to be very short.
Zoya. Komsomol saboteur
After 4 days of training in a sabotage school (there was no more time - the enemy was at the walls of the capital), she became a fighter in the "partisan unit 9903 of the headquarters of the Western Front."
In early November, Zoya's detachment, which arrived in the Volokolamsk region, carried out the first successful sabotage - mining the road.
On November 17, an order from the command was issued, ordering the destruction of residential buildings in the rear of the enemy to a depth of 40-60 kilometers in order to drive the Germans out into the cold. During perestroika, this directive was criticized mercilessly, saying that it actually had to turn against the civilian population in the occupied territories. But one must understand the situation in which it was adopted - the Nazis were rushing to Moscow, the situation was hanging by a thread, and any harm inflicted on the enemy was considered useful for victory.
After 4 days of training at a sabotage school, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became a fighter in the "partisan unit 9903 of the headquarters of the Western Front." Photo: www.russianlook.com
On November 18, the sabotage group, which included Zoya, was ordered to burn several settlements, including the village of Petrishchevo. During the mission, the group came under fire, and together with Zoya two remained - the group commander Boris Krainov and fighter Vasily Klubkov.
On November 27, Krainov gave the order to set fire to three houses in Petrishchevo. He and Zoya successfully coped with the task, and Klubkov was captured by the Germans. However, at the gathering point, they missed each other. Zoya, left alone, decided to once again go to Petrishchevo and commit another arson.
During the first raid of saboteurs, they managed to destroy the German stable with horses, and also set fire to a couple more houses where the Germans were quartered.
But after that, the Nazis gave the order to local residents to be on duty. On the evening of November 28, Zoya, who was trying to set fire to the barn, was noticed by a local resident who collaborated with the Germans. Sviridov... He made a fuss and the girl was seized. For this Sviridov was awarded a bottle of vodka.
Zoya. Last hours
The Germans tried to find out from Zoya who she was and where the other members of the group were. The girl confirmed that she set fire to the house in Petrishchevo, said that her name was Tanya, but did not provide any more information.
Reproduction of a portrait of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a partisan. Photo: RIA Novosti / David Sholomovich
She was stripped naked, beaten, flogged with a belt - no use. At night, in one nightgown, barefoot, they drove through the frost, hoping that the girl would break, but she continued to be silent.
There were also their tormentors - local residents came to the house where Zoya was kept Solina and Smirnova, whose houses were set on fire by a sabotage group. Having cursed the girl, they tried to beat the already half-dead Zoya. The mistress of the house intervened and drove the "avengers" out. At parting, they threw a pot of slop into the captive, which stood at the entrance.
On the morning of November 29, German officers made another attempt to interrogate Zoya, but again to no avail.
At about half past ten in the morning, they took her out into the street, hanging a sign "House arsonist" on her chest. Zoya was led to the place of execution by two soldiers who held her back - after the torture, she herself could hardly stand on her feet. At the gallows, Smirnova reappeared, cursing the girl and hitting her on the leg with a stick. This time the woman was driven away by the Germans.
The Nazis began to shoot Zoya with a camera. The exhausted girl turned to the villagers who had been driven to a terrible sight:
Citizens! You don’t stand, don’t look, but you need to help fight! This death of mine is my achievement!
The Germans tried to silence her, but she spoke again:
Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers, before it's too late, surrender! The Soviet Union is invincible and will not be defeated!
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is being taken to execution. Photo: www.russianlook.com
Zoya herself climbed onto the box, after which a noose was thrown over her. At that moment she shouted again:
- No matter how much you hang us, you don’t hang everyone, we are 170 million. But our comrades will avenge you for me!The girl wanted to shout something else, but the German knocked the box out from under her feet. Instinctively, Zoya grabbed the rope, but the Nazi hit her on the arm. It was all over in a moment.
Tonya. From a prostitute to executioners
Tony Makarova's wanderings ended in the area of the village of Lokot in the Bryansk region. The infamous "Lokotskaya Republic", an administrative-territorial entity of Russian collaborators, operated here. In essence, these were the same German lackeys as in other places, only more clearly formalized.
The police patrol detained Tonya, but the partisan or the underground was not suspected of her. She liked the policemen, who took her to them, gave her drink, fed her and raped her. However, the latter is very relative - the girl, who only wanted to survive, agreed to everything.
Tonya did not play the role of a prostitute under the police for long - once, drunk, she was taken out into the courtyard and put behind the Maxim machine gun. There were people in front of the machine gun - men, women, old people, children. She was ordered to shoot. For Tony, who passed not only nursing courses, but also machine gunners, this was not a big deal. True, the drunk girl did not really understand what she was doing. But, nevertheless, she coped with the task.
Shooting of prisoners. Photo: www.russianlook.com
The next day, Tonya found out that she was no longer a slut with policemen, but an official - an executioner with a salary of 30 German marks and with her own bunk.
The Lokot Republic fought mercilessly against the enemies of the new order - partisans, underground fighters, communists, other unreliable elements, as well as members of their families. Those arrested were herded into a barn, which served as a prison, and in the morning they were taken out to be shot.
The cell accommodated 27 people, and all of them had to be eliminated in order to make room for new ones.
Neither the Germans nor even the local police wanted to take on this work. And here Tonya, who appeared out of nowhere, came in very handy with her passion for the machine gun.
Tonya. Machine Gun Executioner Routine
The girl did not lose her mind, but on the contrary, felt that her dream had come true. And let Anka shoot enemies, and she shoots women and children - the war will write off everything! But her life is finally getting better.
Her daily routine was as follows: in the morning shooting of 27 people from a machine gun, finishing off survivors with a pistol, cleaning weapons, in the evening schnapps and dancing in a German club, and at night love with some cute German or, at worst, with a policeman.
As an incentive, she was allowed to take things from the dead. So Tonya acquired a bunch of women's outfits, which, however, had to be repaired - traces of blood and bullet holes immediately interfered with wearing.
However, sometimes Tonya allowed "marriage" - several children managed to survive, because because of their small stature, the bullets passed over their heads. The children were taken out along with the corpses by the local residents who buried the dead and handed over to the partisans. Rumors about a woman executioner, "Tonka the machine gunner", "Tonka the Muscovite" spread around the area. Local partisans even announced a hunt for the executioner, but they could not get to it.
In total, about 1,500 people became victims of Antonina Makarova.
Zoya. From obscurity to immortality
For the first time, a journalist wrote about Zoe's feat Peter Lidov in the newspaper "Pravda" in January 1942 in the article "Tanya". His material was based on the testimony of an elderly man who witnessed the execution and was shocked by the girl's courage.
Zoe's corpse hung at the place of execution for almost a month. Drunken German soldiers did not leave the girl alone, even dead: they stabbed her with knives, cut off her chest. After another such disgusting trick, even the German command ran out of patience: local residents were ordered to remove the body and bury it.
Monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, erected at the site of the death of a partisan, in the village of Petrishchevo. Photo: RIA Novosti / A. Cheprunov
After the release of Petrishchevo and publication in Pravda, it was decided to establish the name of the heroine and the exact circumstances of her death.
The corpse identification act was drawn up on February 4, 1942. It was precisely established that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was executed in the village of Petrishchevo. The same Peter Lidov on February 18 spoke about this in the article "Who Was Tanya" in Pravda.
Two days before that, on February 16, 1942, after establishing all the circumstances of the death, Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. She became the first woman to receive such an award during the Great Patriotic War.
Zoya's remains were reburied in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery.
Tonya. Escape
By the summer of 1943, Tony's life again took a sharp turn - the Red Army moved to the West, starting to liberate the Bryansk region. This did not bode well for the girl, but here she very opportunely fell ill with syphilis, and the Germans sent her to the rear, so that she would not re-infect the valiant sons of Great Germany.
In the German hospital, however, it also soon became uncomfortable - the Soviet troops were approaching so quickly that only the Germans had time to evacuate, and there was no longer any concern for accomplices.
Realizing this, Tonya fled from the hospital, once again being surrounded, but now Soviet. But her survival skills were honed - she managed to get documents that all this time she was a nurse in a Soviet hospital.
Who said that the formidable "SMERSH" punished everyone in a row? Nothing like this! Tonya successfully managed to enter the service in a Soviet hospital, where at the beginning in 1945 a young soldier, a real war hero, fell in love with her.
The guy made Tonya an offer, she answered with consent, and, having got married, the young people left after the end of the war for the Belarusian city of Lepel, home of her husband.
So the female executioner Antonina Makarova disappeared, and her place was taken by the honored veteran Antonina Ginzburg.
Soviet investigators learned about the monstrous deeds of the "Tonka-machine-gunner" immediately after the liberation of the Bryansk region. The remains of about one and a half thousand people were found in mass graves, but only two hundred were identified.
They interrogated the witnesses, checked, specified - but they could not attack the trail of the woman-punisher.
Tonya. Exposure 30 years later
Meanwhile, Antonina Ginzburg led the ordinary life of a Soviet person - she lived, worked, raised two daughters, even met with schoolchildren, talking about her heroic military past. Of course, without mentioning the deeds of "Tonka the machine gunner".
Antonina Makarova. Photo: Public Domain
The KGB spent more than three decades looking for her, but found it almost by accident. A certain citizen Parfenov, going abroad, submitted a questionnaire with information about his relatives. There, among the solid Parfyonovs, why Antonina Makarova, married to Ginzburg, was listed as a sister.
Yes, how that mistake of the teacher helped Tonya, how many years thanks to her she remained out of reach of justice!
The KGB operatives worked with jewelry - it was impossible to blame an innocent person for such atrocities. Antonina Ginzburg was checked from all sides, witnesses, even a former policeman-lover, were secretly brought to Lepel. And only after all of them had confirmed that Antonina Ginzburg was "Tonka the Machine Gunner" was she arrested.
She did not deny, talked about everything calmly, said that nightmares did not torment her. She did not want to communicate with her daughters or her husband. And the front-line spouse ran around the authorities, threatened with a complaint Brezhnev, even at the UN - demanded the release of his beloved wife. Exactly until the investigators decided to tell him what his beloved Tonya is accused of.
After that, the dashing, gallant veteran turned gray and aged overnight. The family disowned Antonina Ginzburg and left Lepel. You cannot wish the enemy what these people had to endure.
Tonya. Pay
Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was tried in Bryansk in the fall of 1978. This was the last major trial of traitors to the Motherland in the USSR and the only trial of a woman punisher.
Antonina herself was convinced that, due to the years ago, the punishment could not be too severe, she even believed that she would receive a suspended sentence. She only regretted that because of the shame she had to move again and change jobs. Even the investigators, knowing about the post-war exemplary biography of Antonina Ginzburg, believed that the court would show leniency. Moreover, 1979 was declared the Year of the Woman in the USSR, and not a single representative of the fairer sex has been executed in the country since the war.
However, on November 20, 1978, the court sentenced Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg to capital punishment - execution.
At the trial, her guilt was documented in the murder of 168 people from those whose identity it was possible to establish. More than 1,300 more remained unknown victims of the "Tonka-machine-gunner". There are crimes for which it is impossible to forgive or pardon.
At six in the morning on August 11, 1979, after all requests for clemency had been rejected, the sentence against Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg was carried out.
A person always has a choice. Two girls, almost the same age, found themselves in a terrible war, looked death in the face, and made a choice between the death of a hero and the life of a traitor.
Everyone chose their own.
Today I would like to talk about "Soviet collaboration" during the Second World War (mostly about the Stalingrad region). Previously, this problem was simply hushed up, and if General A.A. Vlasov, "Russian Liberation Army" or Cossacks in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, then they were called exclusively traitors.
Russian historians and publicists under the influence of political conjuncture for a long time summarized selectively the facts of cooperation of Soviet citizens with the occupiers, the scale and significance of collaboration was understated. This was due to the fact that the emerging socio-political phenomenon contradicted the conclusion about the indestructible unity of Soviet society.
During the Soviet period, the phenomenon of collaboration was obscured, and the reasons for its occurrence were distorted. Only in the post-Soviet period did the collaboration of Soviet citizens become the object of serious attention of scientists not only abroad, but also in Russia. Scientists are investigating not only the manifestations, but also the causes of this dangerous phenomenon. Yu.A. Afanasyev concluded that "The collaboration of Soviet citizens was a product not so much of sympathy for fascist ideology and Hitlerite Germany, but of those socio-political and national conditions in the USSR that were created by the Stalinist regime", it was in this that "the specificity of the origins of collaborationism in the Soviet Union, as opposed to its emergence in other countries" consisted.
The conclusion of most scholarly historians is that Stalinism gave rise to collaboration... In the pre-war period, certain socio-economic and political conditions developed in the South of Russia, which became a breeding ground for the emergence of collaborationism in this region and the emergence of collaborators. The famous historian M.I. Semiryaga gave the following definition of collaboration: "Collaboration is a kind of fascism and the practice of cooperation of national traitors with the Nazi occupation authorities to the detriment of their people and homeland"... At the same time, he identified four main types of collaboration: everyday, administrative, economic and military-political. He unequivocally qualifies the latter type as treason and treason.
During the Great Patriotic War, the form of collaborationism - cooperation with the Nazis took, according to various estimates of researchers, from 800 thousand to 1.5 million Soviet citizens, the Cossacks in them constituted a noticeable part - 94.5 thousand. According to the results of the 1939 census, 2,288,129 people lived in the Stalingrad region, of which 892,643 people (39%) were urban residents, and 1,395,488 people (60.9%) lived in rural areas. During the census, the Cossacks were counted as Russians. Thus, the data on the number of Russians in the "Cossack" regions were actually data on the number of the Don Cossacks. While 86% of Russians lived in rural areas, the share of Cossacks averaged over 93%, about 975,000 people.
So, from 11 to 12 July 1942, German troops entered the Stalingrad region. From July 17, heavy fighting unfolded on the distant approaches to Stalingrad, west of the village of Nizhne-Chirskaya. By August 12, 1942, Tormosinovsky, Chernyshkovsky, Kaganovichsky, Serafimovsky, Nizhne-Chirsky, Kotelnikovsky districts of the region were completely occupied, partially - Sirotinsky, Kalachevsky, Verkhne-Kurmoyarsky and Voroshilovsky, on August 16, Kletsky district was completely occupied. 256 148 people lived in these areas. (mainly Cossacks) or 18.4% of the rural population of the region.
The Reich leadership was not interested in creating a national Russian state, on political terms it refused to use Russian emigrants, their descendants and the Orthodox Church in the "new construction", but at the same time it was interested in supporting reliable groups of civilians who were benevolent to the Germans and ready to serve them. They could receive support from those who were dissatisfied with the Soviet regime, former White Guards, dispossessed, victims of repression and decossackization.
The environment hostile to Soviet power greeted Hitler's troops as dear and long-awaited guests. Already in the first days of the occupation, the number of Germany's supporters began to grow, since the German-Romanian troops moving through the territory of the region included a significant number of former Red Army soldiers, including natives of the Stalingrad region, who worked as translators, sleds in carts and chauffeurs.
The occupiers specially identified and involved in cooperation the Cossacks offended by the Soviet regime during the years of collectivization. The anti-Soviet Cossacks, after waiting for the arrival of the Germans, willingly offered their services. Citizens persecuted under Soviet rule enjoyed privileges. However, it should be noted that in many cases young men and young men of military age loyal to the Soviet regime went to serve the invaders; this was the only alternative for them to avoid being sent to a prisoner of war camp or to work in Germany.
At the same time, measures were taken to ideologically substantiate the use of the Cossacks as a military force as an ally of the Germans. Energetic work unfolded under the auspices "Von Continental Forschung Institute"... This state institution, engaged in the study of the history of the peoples of Europe, has now received the task of developing a special racial theory about the ancient origin of the Cossacks as descendants of the Ostrogoths. A priori, the task set, therefore, anti-scientific and falsification, initially false, consisted in justifying the fact that after the Ostrogoths on the Black Sea coast in the II-IV centuries. AD not owned by the Slavs, but by the Cossacks, whose roots, thus, go back to the peoples "maintaining strong blood ties with their Germanic ancestral home." This meant that the Cossacks belonged to the Aryan race and by their essence they rise above all the peoples around them and have every right, like the fascized Germans, to rule over them. Is it any wonder that the nationalists KNOD (Cossack National Liberation Movement) ardently and immediately, without any hesitation, they took up this chauvinistic idea and turned into its zealous propagandists.
The first among them was the Don politician P. Kharlamov. The Cossack press trumpeted: "A proud people living in Great Cossackia must take a worthy place in the composition of New Europe." "Cossackia -" crossroads of the history of peoples "- proclaimed A.K. Lenivov, a prominent ideologist of the Cossack self-styledists, - will not belong to Moscow, but to the Cossack people". In the Cossack regions themselves, things were happening that the Soviet press could no longer adequately cover on its pages. M.A. Sholokhov, correspondent of the newspaper "Krasnaya Zvezda", in the summer of 1942 was assigned to write an article on the situation on the Don. But he didn’t present it by the time. At the request of the editorial staff "He said that he could not now write the article" The Don is Raging ", since what is happening now on the Don does not dispose to work on such an article" .
What prevented Sholokhov then from writing about what was happening on the Don? The task of the Bolshevik propaganda was then to show the monolithic unity of the Soviet people, which had developed under the banner of Lenin and Stalin. And in the villages and farms, groups of a certain part of the Cossacks met the German troops with bread and salt, and threw flowers at them. In September 1942 Colonel of the German cavalry Helmut von Pannwitz, who spoke Russian and was familiar with the Cossack mentality, was tasked to begin the accelerated formation of the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division in the Don and North Caucasus.
An important role in the formation of German policy towards the Cossacks was played by contacts of influential German circles with representatives of the Cossack emigration. The most active part in playing the "Cossack card" in the Rostov and Stalingrad regions was taken by the former chieftain of the Great Don Army living in Germany P.N. Krasnov.
Peter Krasnov
As already noted, the German leadership saw the Cossacks as its potential ally, therefore, in the Cossack regions of the Stalingrad region, from the very first days of the occupation, a policy of “flirting” with the Cossack population was pursued. After the entry of Hitler's troops into the farmstead or the village of the Cossacks, a meeting was assembled, where one of the German officers delivered a welcoming speech. As a rule, he congratulated those present on getting rid of the "Bolshevik yoke", assured the Cossacks that the Germans treated them with respect, urged them to actively cooperate with the Wehrmacht and the occupation authorities.
In general, in the Stalingrad region, the occupation policy towards the Cossacks was inconsistent and contradictory. Unlike the Rostov region, here, for example, the centralized Cossack self-government was not revived.
The German command and the occupation administration sought to attract to their side not only the Cossacks who had previously fought as part of the White Army or repressed by the Soviet regime, but also the broader masses of the Cossacks, especially the youth. Their policy was primarily aimed at separating the Cossacks from the Russians. At every opportunity, the Germans emphasized the superiority of the Cossacks over the Russians. Where it was possible, the invaders tried not to offend the Cossacks.
The German command hoped to use the Cossacks as an armed force in the fight against the Red Army and the partisans. Initially, by order of the Chief Quartermaster of the German General Staff of the Ground Forces F. Paulus of January 9, 1942, the task was set to create Cossack units to protect the German rear, which was also to partially compensate for the losses of the Wehrmacht personnel in 1941. On April 15, Hitler personally authorized the use of Cossack units not only in the fight against partisans, but also in hostilities at the front. In August 1942, in accordance with the "Regulations on local auxiliary formations in the East", representatives of the Turkic peoples and Cossacks were singled out in a separate category. "Equal allies fighting shoulder to shoulder with German soldiers against Bolshevism as part of special units"... In November 1942, shortly before the start of the Soviet counteroffensive at Stalingrad, the German command gave additional approval for the formation of Cossack regiments in the Don, Kuban and Terek regions.
In the Stalingrad region, where the partisan movement was extremely weak, and the situation at the front was unfavorable, the newly formed Cossack units, most likely, were supposed to be used not to protect the German rear, but to participate in hostilities against the Red Army.
White officers-emigrants who returned to their homeland as soldiers of the German troops took an active part in the formation of the Cossack detachments. Before the war, 672 Cossacks, a native of the Stalingrad region, lived abroad, including 16 generals, 45 colonels, 138 officers with the rank below colonel, 30 members of the Don military circle and ordinary Cossacks - 443 people. Part of the White Cossack emigrants and their sons arrived on the territory of the Stalingrad region as servicemen of the Nazi troops. All of them were promised to be demobilized after the complete liberation of the areas inhabited by the Cossacks. After arriving on the territory of the region, the emigrants dispersed to the districts and campaigned in the villages and farms. The occupation administration placed the brunt of the recruiting work on the elders and the police. Most often, it was they who, with the help of threats, forced the youth to enroll in the Cossack detachments.
In the occupied "Cossack" regions, there were 690 settlements - from the smallest (10 or more inhabitants) to the largest (with a population of up to 10 thousand people). Each "elected" the headman, the number of police officers in the settlements ranged from 2 to 7 people, ie. the average was 5 people. Taking this into account, it can be assumed that in the occupied "Cossack" regions 690 people worked as chiefs and 3,450 policemen, a total of about 4,140 people, about 2.8% of the total number of the population remaining in the occupation. Meanwhile, there were more German accomplices from among the local residents, since they worked in various military and civil structures of the occupation regime (commandant's offices, the Gestapo, rural communities, at enterprises, in public catering, etc.)
The occupation authorities sought to neutralize the influence on the population of influential figures from among the party and Soviet activists, who were unable to evacuate for a number of reasons. Their accomplices from among the local population helped the invaders to identify them. Part of the Soviet activists, fearing reprisals, were recruited by the invaders. Most of the Communists and Komsomol members were registered for fear that they would be betrayed. Most of them submitted their party and Komsomol documents to the Gestapo, and many agreed to be recruited as secret agents. There are many examples of this: out of 33 Komsomol members of the Tormosino farm, 27 people agreed to be agents of the Gestapo, more than 100 Komsomol members married Germans and left for Germany, yesterday's Komsomol members gave their comrades to the Gestapo for presents (sweets, chocolates, coffee, sugar). They just wanted to survive.
An important component of the German occupation policy was fascist propaganda, designed to neutralize anti-German sentiments and attract the remaining population to cooperation. In the eyes of the population, a clear demonstration of the weakness of the Red Army was its rapid retreat to Stalingrad, the abandoned equipment, weapons, and thousands of bodies of the dead. The 47 Soviet POW camps scattered across the occupied territory were also a constant reminder of the weakness of the Soviet regime and its army. The number of prisoners was significant. Only in the big bend of the Don, west of the kalach, 57 thousand soldiers of the Red Army were captured.
The results of mobilization in the Kotelnikovsky district turned out to be very modest: only 50 volunteers were sent to the front, 19 people were sent to study at the gendarmerie school in the village of Oryol in the Rostov region, 50 people joined the Cossack detachments. The same picture was observed in other areas.
An attempt to enlist the Cossacks on a mass scale for military service proved to be ineffective for a number of reasons. First, because of the negative attitude towards the German occupation policy; secondly, thanks to the powerful offensive of the Soviet troops; thirdly, the atrocities of the occupiers.
Thus, unlike the Rostov region, the inhabitants of the Stalingrad region in their overwhelming mass did not become servants of the Nazis. The facts convincingly prove that the myths about the unity of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War and about the massive complicity of the inhabitants of the region with the occupation authorities do not correspond to reality. In the Stalingrad region, the invaders were unconditionally supported mainly by former White Guards, officials, merchants, Cossack chieftains, kulaks, persons subjected to political repression and their relatives. It was this category of persons that became the main support of the German government.