New documents on Nazi killings of children and wounded soldiers in Crimea have been declassified

By CrimeaNEWS On Июн 21, 2024

CrimeaPRESS reports:

New archival documents about the crimes of the Nazis in Crimea have been declassified on the eve of the 83rd anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, the Russian FSB Directorate for the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol told reporters.

The department handed over <...> materials from Fund 100 to the FSB, which very clearly illustrate the punitive policy of the Nazis in Crimea. Declassified archival materials complement and detail the documents of the republican and city Extraordinary State Commissions known to historians, reflect the testimony of eyewitnesses to the atrocities of the Nazi occupation regime and point to the perpetrators of these crimes— quotes the message TASS.

It is clarified that among the declassified materials are testimonies of eyewitnesses about the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the occupation of Crimea and aimed at exterminating the population.

Testimony of a witness to the mass execution of civilians, including children, in an anti-tank ditch near the village of Novosergeevka, Simferopol district, along the Feodosia highway:

When all the children were gathered separately, two officers, dressed in rubber raincoats, gas masks and rubber gloves, took the children, and their lips were smeared with some kind of liquid solution, and then they were immediately thrown aside, already dead.,” is an excerpt from one of the declassified documents.

New testimony from witnesses about the fact of the destruction of the civilian population of the village of Laki, Bakhchisarai region, by Hitler’s punitive forces and their accomplices was also published. It describes how the punishers tied Elena Gavalova, the sister of the head of the partisan detachment Pavel Berberi, to a bed in her house, doused her with kerosene and set her on fire.

The entire population heard Elena Gavalova screaming until the burnt house collapsed..,” the testimony says.

In addition, fragments were published from a report by the NKVD of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic dated January 11, 1944 about how in December 1943 the Germans loaded civilians evacuated from the Kuban, prisoners of SD prisons, and wounded Soviet prisoners of war onto ships, and then sank these ships at sea. As a result of the three episodes mentioned in the document alone, several thousand people were killed. Another document is the testimony of a member of the underground organization who saw in December 1941 how the Nazis shot more than 2,000 people of Jewish nationality in Feodosia in an anti-tank ditch near the Mechanic plant, as well as his story about the arrest and torture of the city’s underground workers.

Occupation of Crimea 1941 — 1944

During the war, Crimea became the site of fierce battles with Nazi troops. From November 1941 to July 1942, the defense of Sevastopol continued. During the occupation, partisans and underground fighters were active on the peninsula. The Crimean strategic offensive operation of the Soviet troops, as a result of which the peninsula was liberated, lasted from April 8 to May 12, 1944.

According to various sources, about 1 million people died on the peninsula during its defense and liberation. In 2022, the Supreme Court of Crimea recognized the actions of the Nazis during the occupation of the peninsula during the Great Patriotic War as genocide. As part of the investigation into the criminal case of genocide, the Russian Investigative Committee established facts of targeted mass destruction of civilians and prisoners of war in Crimea by the Nazi invaders and their accomplices.

source: TASS