In fact, we know little about the Great Patriotic War and many of its events remain unknown to many ordinary people. However, it is our duty to remember what happened at that terrible time in order to prevent a repeat of the senseless death of millions of people. This post will shed light on one of the many episodes of the Second World War that not everyone knows about.

In 1944, from various anti-partisan and punitive units, on the orders of Himmler, the formation of a special unit, the Jagdverbandt, began. The groups "Ost" and "West" operated in the western and eastern directions. Plus a special team - "Yangengeinsack Russland und Gesand". “Jagdverbandt-Balticum” was also included there.
She specialized in terrorist activities in the Baltic countries, which after the occupation were divided into general districts: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The latter also included Pskov, Novgorod, Luga, Slantsy - the entire territory up to Leningrad.
The elementary cell of this peculiar pyramid became the “anti-partisan group”, which recruited those who were ready to sell themselves to the Germans for a can of stew.
Armed with Soviet weapons, sometimes dressed in Red Army uniforms with insignia in their buttonholes, the bandits entered the village. If they came across policemen along the way, the “guests” mercilessly shot them. Then questions began like “how can we find “our people”?
There were simple-minded people who were ready to help strangers, and then this is what happened:

“On December 31, 1943, two guys came to our village of Stega and began asking local residents how they could find the partisans. The girl Zina, who lived in the village of Stega, said that she had such a connection.
At the same time, she indicated where the partisans were located. These guys soon left, and the next day a punitive detachment burst into the village...
They surrounded the village, drove all the residents out of their homes and then divided them into groups. Old people and children were driven into the barnyard, and young girls were escorted to the station to be sent to forced labor. The punitive forces set fire to the barnyard, where the population that had been herded there was located: mostly old people and children.
Among them were me and my grandmother and my two cousins: 10 and 6 years old. People screamed and begged for mercy, then the punishers entered the yard and started shooting at everyone who was there. I was the only one who managed to escape from our family.
The next day, I, together with a group of citizens from the village of Stega who were working on the road, went to where the cattle yard used to be. There we saw the corpses of burnt women and children. Many lay hugging...
Two weeks later, the punitive forces carried out the same reprisals against residents of the villages of Glushnevo and Suslovo, who were also destroyed along with all the inhabitants" - from the testimony of witness Pavel Grabovsky (b. 1928), a native of the village of Grabovo, Maryn village council of the Ashevsky district; letter file No. 005/5 "Sov. secret").

According to eyewitnesses, a detachment under the command of a certain Martynovsky and his closest assistant Reshetnikov carried out especially atrocities in the Pskov region. The security officers managed to get on the trail of the last of the punishers many years after the end of the war (criminal case No. A-15511).
In the early 1960s, one of the residents of the region contacted the regional KGB department. Driving through some stop, she recognized the humble lineman... as a punisher who took part in the execution of civilians in her native village during the war. And although the train stopped for only a few minutes, a glance was enough for her to understand: he!
This is how the investigators met a certain Gerasimov, nicknamed Pashka the Sailor, who, at the very first interrogation, admitted that he was part of an anti-partisan detachment.
“Yes, I took part in the executions,” Gerasimov was indignant during interrogations, “But I was only a performer.”

“In May 1944, our detachment was located in the village of Zhaguli, Drissensky district, Vitebsk region. One evening we went on an operation against partisans. As a result of the fighting, we suffered significant losses, and the platoon commander, German army lieutenant Boris Pshik, was killed.
At the same time, we captured a large group of civilians who were hiding in the forest. These were mostly older women. There were also children there.
Having learned that Pshik had been killed, Martynovsky ordered the prisoners to be divided into two parts. After that, pointing to one of them, he ordered: “Shoot for the soul!”
Someone ran into the forest and found a hole, where they later took the people. After this, Reshetnikov began to select punishers to carry out the order. At the same time, he named Pashka the Sailor, Narets Oscar, Nikolai Frolov...
They took the people into the forest, stood them in front of the pit, and stood a few meters away from them. Martynovsky was sitting on a stump at that time, not far from the place of execution.
I stood next to him and told him that he could get punished by the Germans for his unauthorized actions, to which Martynovsky replied that he didn’t care about the Germans and he just needed to keep his mouth shut.
After that he said: “Igorek, get to work!” And Reshetnikov gave the order: “Fire!” After this, the punishers began to shoot. Having pushed aside the punishers, Gerasimov made his way to the edge of the pit and, shouting “Polundra!”, began firing from his pistol, although he had a machine gun hanging behind his back.
Martynovsky himself did not participate in the execution, but Reshetnikov tried" - from the testimony of Vasily Terekhov, one of the fighters of Martynovsky’s detachment; criminal case No. A-15511.

Not wanting to be held accountable for the “exploits” of the traitors, Pashka the Sailor handed over his “colleagues” wholeheartedly. The first person he named was a certain Igor Reshetnikov, Martynovsky’s right hand, whom the operatives soon found behind barbed wire in one of the camps located near Vorkuta.
It immediately became clear that he received his 25 years in prison for... espionage for a foreign state. As it turned out, after the surrender of Germany, Reshetnikov ended up in the American zone, where he was recruited by intelligence. In the fall of 1947, he was transported on a special mission to the Soviet occupation zone.
For this, the new patrons promised him a residence permit overseas, but SMERSH intervened in the matter, whose employees identified the traitor. A quick court determined his punishment.
Finding himself in the far north, Reshetnikov decided that no one would remember his punitive past and he would be released with a clean passport. However, his hopes were dashed when his former subordinate, Pashka the Sailor, conveyed to him a kind of greeting from the distant past.
In the end, under the pressure of irrefutable evidence, Reshetnikov began to testify, omitting, however, his personal participation in punitive actions.

For the dirtiest work, the Germans looked for assistants, as a rule, among declassed elements and criminals. A certain Martynovsky, a Pole by origin, was ideal for this role. After leaving the camp in 1940, having been deprived of the right to reside in Leningrad, he settled in Luga.
Having waited for the Nazis to arrive, he voluntarily offered them his services. He was immediately sent to a special school, after which he received the rank of lieutenant in the Wehrmacht.
For some time, Martynovsky served at the headquarters of one of the punitive units in Pskov, and then the Germans, noticing his zeal, instructed him to form an anti-partisan group.
At the same time, Igor Reshetnikov, who returned from prison on June 21, 1941, came to her. An important detail: his father also went to serve the Germans, becoming burgomaster of the city of Luga.

According to the invaders' plan, Martynovsky's gang was supposed to pose as partisans of other formations. They were supposed to penetrate into areas where the people's avengers were active, conduct reconnaissance, destroy patriots, and, under the guise of partisans, carry out raids and rob the local population.
To disguise themselves, their leaders had to know the names and surnames of the leaders of large partisan formations. For each successful operation, the bandits were generously paid, so the gang earned occupation marks not out of fear, but out of conscience.
In particular, with the help of Martynovsky’s gang, several partisan appearances were uncovered in the Sebezh region. At the same time, in the village of Chernaya Gryaz, Reshetnikov personally shot and killed Konstantin Fish, the intelligence chief of one of the Belarusian partisan brigades, who was going to establish contact with his Russian neighbors.
In November 1943, bandits were on the trail of two groups of scouts at once, thrown to the rear from the “mainland”. They managed to surround one of them, led by Captain Rumyantsev.
The fight was unequal. With the last bullet, intelligence officer Nina Donkukova wounded Martynovsky, but was captured and sent to the local Gestapo office. The girl was tortured for a long time, but having achieved nothing, the Germans brought her to Martynovsky’s detachment, giving her “to be devoured by the wolves.”

From the testimony of false partisans:

“On March 9, 1942, in the village of Yelemno, Sabutitsky s/council, traitors to our people Igor Reshetnikov from Luga and Mikhail Ivanov from the village of Vysokaya Griva chose as a target for a shooting exercise a resident of Yelemno Fedorov Boris (b. 1920), who died as a result.
In the village of Klobutitsy, Klobutitsy s/soviet, on September 17, 1942, 12 women and 3 men were shot simply because a railroad was blown up in the immediate vicinity of the village."
“There was such a guy in our detachment - Vasily Petrov. During the war, he served as an officer and, as it turned out, was connected with the partisans.
He wanted to lead the detachment into partisans and save them from treason. Reshetnikov found out about this and told Martynovsky everything. Together they killed this Vasily. They also shot his family: his wife and daughter. This was, I think, on November 7, 1943. I was then very impressed by the small felt boots...”
“There was also such a case: when during one of the operations near Polotsk... the partisans attacked us. We retreated. Suddenly Reshetnikov appeared. He began to swear and shout at us.
Here, in my presence... he shot the nurse and Viktor Alexandrov, who served in my platoon. By order of Reshetnikov, a 16-year-old teenage girl was raped. This was done by his orderly Mikhail Alexandrov.
Reshetnikov then told him: come on, I’ll remove 10 punishments for this. Later, Reshetnikov also shot his mistress Maria Pankratova. He killed her in the bath out of jealousy" - from the testimony at the trial of Pavel Gerasimov (Sailor); criminal case No. A-15511.

Truly terrible was the fate of the women of those places where the detachment passed. Occupying the village, the bandits selected the most beautiful concubines for themselves.
They had to wash, sew, cook, satisfy the lust of this always drunk team. And when she changed her location, this peculiar female convoy, as a rule, was shot and recruited new victims in a new place.
“On May 21, 1944, the punitive detachment moved from the village of Kokhanovichi through Sukhorukovo to our village - Bichigovo. I was not at home, and my family lived in a hut near the cemetery. They were discovered, and their daughter was taken with them to the village of Vidoki.
The mother began to look for her daughter, went to Vidoki, but there was an ambush there, and she was killed. Then I went, and my daughter, it turns out, was beaten, tortured, raped and killed. I found it only along the edge of the dress: the grave was poorly buried.
In Vidoki, punitive forces caught children, women, and old people, drove them into a bathhouse and burned them. When I was looking for my daughter, I was present as they dismantled the bathhouse: 30 people died there” - from the testimony at the trial of witness Pavel Kuzmich Sauluk; criminal case No. A-15511.

Nadezhda Borisevich is one of the many victims of werewolves.

Thus, the tangle of bloody crimes of this gang, which began its inglorious path near Luga, was gradually unraveled. Then there were punitive actions in the Pskov, Ostrovsky, and Pytalovsky districts.
Near Novorzhev, the punitive forces fell into a partisan ambush and were almost completely destroyed by the 3rd partisan brigade under the command of Alexander German.
However, the leaders - Martynovsky himself and Reshetnikov - managed to escape. Having abandoned their subordinates in the cauldron, they came to their German masters, expressing a desire to continue serving not out of fear, but out of conscience. So the newly formed team of traitors ended up in the Sebezh region, and then on the territory of Belarus.
After the summer offensive of 1944, as a result of which Pskov was liberated, this imaginary partisan detachment reached Riga itself, where the Jagdverbandt-OST headquarters was located.
Here the YAGD gang of Martynovsky - Reshetnikov amazed even their owners with pathological drunkenness and unbridled morals. For this reason, already in the fall of the same year, this rabble was sent to the small Polish town of Hohensaltz, where they began to master sabotage training.
Somewhere along the way, Reshetnikov dealt with Martynovsky and his family: his two-year-old son, wife and mother-in-law, who were traveling with the detachment.
According to Gerasimov, “that same night they were buried in a ditch near the house where they lived. Then one of ours, nicknamed Mole, brought gold that belonged to the Martynovskys.”
When the Germans missed their henchman, Reshetnikov explained what happened by saying that he allegedly tried to escape, so he was forced to act according to the laws of war.

For this and other “feats,” the Nazis awarded Reshetnikov the title of SS Hauptsturmführer, awarded him the Iron Cross and... sent him to suppress resistance in Croatia and Hungary.
They were also trained to work deep in the Soviet rear. For this purpose, parachute business was studied especially carefully. However, the rapid advance of the Soviet army confused all the plans of this motley team of German special forces.
This gang ended its “combat path” ingloriously: in the spring of 1945, surrounded by Soviet tanks, almost all of it died, unable to break through to the main forces of the Germans.
The exception was only a few people, among whom was Reshetnikov himself.

In contact with

The most famous general among the collaborators. Perhaps the most titled in the Soviet style: Andrei Andreevich earned all-Union respect in the Great Patriotic War even before his lifelong disgrace - in December 1941, Izvestia published a lengthy essay on the role of commanders who played a significant role in the defense of Moscow, where there was a photograph of Vlasov; Zhukov himself highly appreciated the importance of the lieutenant general's participation in this campaign. He betrayed by failing to cope with the “proposed circumstances”, for which, in fact, he was not guilty. Commanding the 2nd Shock Army in 1942, Vlasov tried for a long time, but unsuccessfully, to get his formation out of encirclement. He was captured, having been sold by the headman of the village where he tried to hide, cheaply - for a cow, 10 packs of shag and 2 bottles of vodka. “Not even a year had passed” when the captive Vlasov sold his homeland even cheaper. A high-ranking Soviet commander would inevitably pay for his loyalty with action. Despite the fact that Vlasov immediately after his capture declared his readiness to assist the German troops in every possible way, the Germans took a long time to decide where and in what capacity to assign him. Vlasov is considered the leader of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA). This association of Russian prisoners of war, created by the Nazis, ultimately did not have a significant impact on the outcome of the war. The traitorous general was caught by our people in 1945, when Vlasov wanted to surrender to the Americans. He later admitted “to cowardice,” repented, and realized. In 1946, Vlasov was hanged in the courtyard of the Moscow Butyrka, like many other high-ranking collaborators.

Shkuro: a surname that determines fate

In exile, the ataman met with the legendary Vertinsky, and complained that he had lost - he probably felt imminent death - even before he bet on Nazism together with Krasnov. The Germans made this emigrant, popular in the White movement, an SS Gruppenführer, trying to unite the Russian Cossacks who found themselves outside the USSR under his leadership. But nothing useful came of it. At the end of the war, Shkuro was handed over to the Soviet Union, he ended his life in a noose - in 1947 the ataman was hanged in Moscow.

Krasnov: not nice, brothers

Cossack ataman Pyotr Krasnov, after the Nazi attack on the USSR, also immediately declared his active desire to assist the Nazis. Since 1943, Krasnov has headed the Main Directorate of Cossack Troops of the Imperial Ministry of the Eastern Occupied Territories of Germany - he is in charge of, in fact, the same amorphous structure as Shkuro’s. Krasnov's role in World War II and the end of his life's journey are similar to the fate of Shkuro - after being extradited by the British, he was hanged in the courtyard of Butyrka prison.

Kaminsky: fascist self-governor

Bronislav Vladislavovich Kaminsky is known for the leadership of the so-called Lokot Republic in the village of the same name in the Oryol region. From among the local population he formed the SS RONA division, which plundered villages in the occupied territory and fought with the partisans. Himmler personally awarded Kaminsky the Iron Cross. Participant in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. He was eventually shot by his own people - according to the official version, because he showed excessive zeal in looting.

Tonka the machine gunner

A nurse who managed to escape from the Vyazemsky cauldron in 1941. Having been captured, Antonina Makarova ended up in the aforementioned Lokot Republic. She combined cohabitation with police officers with mass machine-gun shootings of residents found to have connections with partisans. According to the most rough estimates, she killed over one and a half thousand people in this way. After the war she went into hiding, changed her last name, but in 1976 she was identified by surviving witnesses of the executions. Sentenced to death and destroyed in 1979.

Boris Holmston-Smyslovsky: “multi-level” traitor

One of the few known active Nazi collaborators who died a natural death. White emigrant, career military man. He entered service in the Wehrmacht even before the start of World War II, his last rank being major general. He took part in the formation of Russian volunteer units of the Wehrmacht. At the end of the war, he fled with the remnants of his army to Liechtenstein, and this USSR state did not extradite him. After World War II, he collaborated with the intelligence services of Germany and the United States.

Executioner of Khatyn

Grigory Vasyura was a teacher before the war. Graduated from the military communications school. At the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War he was captured. Agreed to cooperate with the Germans. He served in the SS punitive battalion in Belarus, showing bestial cruelty. Among other villages, he and his subordinates destroyed the infamous Khatyn - all its inhabitants were driven into a barn and burned alive. Vasyura shot those running out with a machine gun. After the war, he spent a short time in the camp. He settled down well in peaceful life; in 1984, Vasyura even managed to receive the title “Veteran of Labor.” His greed ruined him - the insolent punisher wanted to receive the Order of the Great Patriotic War. In this regard, they began to find out his biography, and everything became clear. In 1986, Vasyura was shot by a tribunal.

Source Balalaika24.ru.

During the Great Patriotic War, the word “policeman” became synonymous with evil and betrayal in the mass consciousness. The attitude towards the overwhelming majority of representatives of the fascist police was clearly intolerant. The police were worse than the enemies. But was this opinion about them always fair?

Who are the policemen

Policemen is a derogatory name for members of the fascist auxiliary police forces that operated in German-occupied territories.

All participants in such formations can be conditionally divided into three groups. Firstly, these are directly German employees. As a rule, they provided leadership and supervised their “colleagues” from among the local population. Secondly, these were Soviet citizens loyal to the Germans, who had their own reasons for joining the police. Some had scores to settle with the Bolsheviks and wanted revenge, while others were simply afraid. Others simply needed money - they had nothing to eat. In addition, there were quite a few prisoners of war among the policemen. The Germans forced them to work for themselves.

There is evidence that up to 400 thousand Soviet citizens were in the service of the auxiliary police. They were involved in all activities of the German military administration. They checked residents, issued documents, took part in guarding prisons and concentration camps, and carried out punitive functions. The most famous example of war crimes by the fascist police is the destruction of the Belarusian village of Khatyn.

Attitude towards the police during the war

There are many memories of eyewitnesses who survived the war about how communication with the police developed and what the attitude towards them was. Often, as synonyms for the word “policeman” in memoirs, words such as “traitor to the motherland”, “accomplice”, “defector” are found. Many openly say that the police were treated worse than the fascists.

In a collection of oral stories of residents of the North Caucasus who survived the Great Patriotic War, there is the following monologue: “Once we arrived in a cart. Our Shpakovsky policeman was with them. We came in and asked for oil. I replied that there was no oil. And my mother confirmed this. We had two two-liter pots of oil, they hid them on the ceiling in sawdust. "Eggs?" - "No". Chickens and ducks walked around the yard. They caught three ducks and a pig and took them away. But these are not Germans, but Bendery. The Germans said that we know what war is and don’t want it, it was our rulers who wanted war. But these people robbed people and raped them.”

The most famous member of the fascist auxiliary police forces is, of course, Tonka the Machine Gunner, aka Antonina Makarova. According to official data, she was responsible for at least 370 executed compatriots. But according to some studies, there is a possibility that she was involved in the murder of 1.5 thousand people.

The story of the priest Archpriest Alexander Romanushko from Belarus is noteworthy. In 1943, during the funeral service for a policeman, he made the following speech: “Brothers and sisters, I understand the great grief of the mother and father of the murdered man, but not our prayers and “Rest with the saints” with his life he deserved in the grave. He is a traitor to the Motherland and a murderer of innocent children and old people. Instead of “Eternal memory” we will say: “Anathema”. They say that his words made such a strong impression on people that many policemen went straight from the cemetery to the partisan detachment.

Punishment

Most policemen suffered severe punishment in the post-war years. Antonina Makarova, for example, was shot by court in 1979. Some escaped execution, like Vladimir Katryuk, who took direct part in the Katyn tragedy and emigrated to Canada after the war. He lived until 2015, engaged in beekeeping, and died of a stroke. But these are all bright stories, and there are only a few of them.

Among the policemen were thousands of ordinary people who switched to the service of the German authorities out of despair. They were punished twice, and many three times. After the liberation of the occupied territories by Soviet troops, former policemen were sent to the front. Those who survived the war were arrested, their orders and medals were taken away, and many were shot. Those who managed to avoid the death penalty were sent to camps. Some of them were convicted again in the 1960s.

Scientist Alexander Bolonkin in his book “Ordinary Communism” describes the fate of his cellmate in the Mordovia camp (1970s): “Next to me was the bed of the former policeman Sukhov. He told the following about himself. I was captured. In a prisoner of war camp he was dying of hunger. Then the Germans announced that they were recruiting a team for work. It turned out that the “work” involved burying corpses and the Germans were recruiting a team of gravediggers. A couple of months later, when the opportunity arises, Sukhov runs, crosses the front line, appears to the authorities, and, out of ignorance, tells everything as it happened. The further fate is typical.” It turns out that the police will police the discord.

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Some historical studies claim that on Hitler's side during the period Second World War Up to 1 million USSR citizens fought. This figure can well be challenged downwards, but it is obvious that in percentage terms the majority 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 WEHRMACHT

They appeared after the occupiers. The Wehrmacht soldiers, having captured one or another Soviet village, under the hot hand, shot everyone who did not have time to hide from the uninvited aliens: Jews, party and Soviet workers, family members of Red Army commanders.

Having done their vile deed, the soldiers in gray uniforms set off further to the east. And auxiliary units and German military police remained to maintain the “new order” in the occupied territory. Naturally, the Germans did not know local realities and were poorly versed in what was happening in the territory they controlled.

Belarusian policemen

In order to successfully carry out the duties assigned to them, the occupiers needed assistants from the local population. And they 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 persons considered supporters of the new government. The corresponding units were not independent and were subordinate to 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 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 names as “local police”, “security police”, “order service”, “self-defense” were also used.

There was no uniform uniform for members of the auxiliary police. As a rule, policemen wore armbands with the inscription Polizei, but their uniform was arbitrary (for example, they could wear a Soviet military uniform with their insignia removed).

The police, recruited from citizens of the USSR, accounted for almost 30% of all local collaborators. Policemen were one of the most despised types of collaborators by our people. And there were quite 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

Who were these “auxiliary police” most often formed from? It was attended by representatives of, relatively speaking, five categories of the population that were different in their goals and views.

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, predominated. 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 had the opportunity to kill “damned Muscovites and Jews” to their heart’s content.

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 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 agreed 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 that brought in a good income.<...>I thought that the Germans, as a cultural European nation, want to free Russia from Bolshevism and return to the old order. Therefore, I accepted the offer to join the police.

<...>The police had the highest salaries and good rations, in addition, there was the opportunity to use one’s official position for personal enrichment...”

As an illustration, we present another document - a fragment of the testimony of policeman Grunsky during the trial of traitors to the Motherland in Smolensk (autumn 1944).

“...Having voluntarily agreed to cooperate with the Germans, I just wanted to survive. Every day, fifty to a hundred people died in the camp. Becoming a volunteer helper 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 me normally and changed into a fresh Soviet uniform, but with German stripes and a mandatory bandage on the shoulder...”

It must be said that the police themselves were well aware that their lives depended on their situation at the front, and they tried to take every opportunity to drink and eat to their heart's content, cuddle local widows and rob.

During one of the feasts, the deputy chief of 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 bout, the eyes of those present widened 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 rip our heads off anyway.”

"LOYAL, BRAVE, OBEDIENT"

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. Their hands were covered in blood up to their elbows! The punitive forces from these battalions accounted for hundreds of thousands of ruined human lives.

For reference, it should be clarified that the special police units were the so-called Schutzmannschaft (German: Schutzmann-schaft - security team, abbr. Schuma) - punitive battalions operating under the command of the Germans and together with other German units. Members of the Schutzmannschaft wore German military uniforms, but with special insignia: on the headdress there was a swastika in a laurel wreath, on the left sleeve there was a swastika in a laurel wreath with the motto in German “Tgei Tapfer Gehorsam” - “Loyal, brave, obedient”.

Policemen at work as executioners

Each battalion was supposed to have five hundred people, including nine Germans. In total, eleven Belarusian Schuma battalions, one artillery division, and 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 Chernigov region, with a total number of 35 thousand people. No Russian battalions were created at all, although Russian traitors served in Schuma battalions of other nationalities.

What did the policemen from the punitive squads do? And what all executioners usually do is murder, murder and more murder. Moreover, the police killed everyone, regardless of gender and age.

Here's a typical example. In Bila Tserkva, not far from Kyiv, “Sonderkommando 4-a” of SS Standartenführer 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 bickering, the Sonderkommando employees destroyed everyone who was over seven years old.

Only about 90 young children, ranging in age from a few months to five, six or seven years, survived. Even seasoned 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 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 not forget this sight for the rest of my life. It is before my eyes all the time. I especially remember the little blond girl who took my hand. Then she was shot too.”

MURDERERS ON "TOUR"

However, the punishers from the Ukrainian punitive battalions “distinguished themselves” on the road. Few people know that the notorious Belarusian village of Khatyn and all its inhabitants were destroyed 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 former members of the Kyiv and Bukovina kurens of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Almost all of its personnel turned out to be staffed by former commanders or privates of the Red Army who were captured in the first months of the war.

Even before enlisting in the ranks of the battalion, all 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 completing its formation, the 118th police battalion first “distinguished itself” in the eyes of the occupiers, taking an active part in mass executions in Kyiv, in the notorious Babi Yar.

Grigory Vasyura - executioner of Khatyn (photo taken shortly before execution by 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 - was kicked out of their homes and driven into a collective farm barn.

The butts of machine guns were used to lift the sick and old people out of bed; they did not spare women with small and infant children.

When all the people were gathered in the barn, the punishers locked the doors, lined the barn with straw, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The wooden barn quickly caught fire. Under the pressure of dozens of human bodies, the doors could not stand it and collapsed.

In burning clothes, gripped by horror, gasping for breath, people rushed to run, but those who escaped from the flames were shot with machine guns. 149 village residents burned in the fire, including 75 children under sixteen years of age. 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 actions.

The further fate of the Khatyn executioner is interesting. 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 defeated in France. After the war in the filtration camp, he managed to cover his tracks.

Only in 1952, for collaboration 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 amnesty for Soviet citizens who collaborated with the occupiers during the war of 1941-1945,” 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 no less than the deputy director of one of the large state farms near Kiev. Vasyura loved to speak to the pioneers, introducing himself as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a front-line signalman. He was even considered an honorary cadet at one of the military schools in Kyiv.

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 charged against him and sentenced to the then capital punishment - execution.

During the trial, it was established that he personally killed more than 360 civilian women, old people, and children. The executioner petitioned for clemency, where, in particular, he wrote: “I ask you to give me, a sick old man, the opportunity to live out my 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 occupiers began to think about their future. The reverse process began: policemen who had not stained themselves with massacres began to join partisan detachments, taking their service weapons with them. According to Soviet historians, in the central part of the USSR, at the time of liberation, partisan detachments consisted on average of one-fifth of defector policemen.

This is what was written in the report of the Leningrad headquarters of the partisan movement:

“In September 1943, intelligence workers and intelligence officers dispersed more than ten enemy garrisons, ensuring the transition of up to a thousand people to the partisans... Intelligence officers and intelligence workers of the 1st Partisan Brigade in November 1943 dispersed six enemy garrisons in the settlements of Batory, Lokot, Terentino , Polovo and sent more than eight hundred people from them to the partisan brigade.”

There were also cases of mass transitions of entire detachments of people who collaborated with the Nazis to the side of the partisans.

August 16, 1943 commander of “Druzhina No. 1”, former lieutenant colonel of the Red Army Gil-Rodionov, and the 2,200 soldiers under his command, having previously shot all the Germans and particularly anti-Soviet commanders, moved towards the partisans.

From the former “combatants” the “1st Anti-Fascist Partisan Brigade” was formed, 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 heavy losses - out of 1,413 soldiers, 1,026 people died.

Well, when the Red Army arrived, it was time for the policemen to answer for everything. Many of them were shot immediately after liberation. The people's court was often quick but fair. The punishers and executioners who managed to escape were still being searched for a long time by the competent authorities.

INSTEAD OF AN 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 collaborator Bronislav Kaminsky, who later became an SS Brigadefuhrer (Major General). Makarova performed the duties of an executioner in the “Lokotsky 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 to me. Only their number changed. Usually I was ordered to shoot a group of 27 people - that’s how many partisans the cell could accommodate. I shot about 500 meters from the prison near some pit.

Those arrested were placed in a line facing the pit. One of the men rolled my machine gun to the execution site. At the command of my superiors, I knelt down and shot at people until everyone fell dead...,” she later said during interrogations.

“I didn’t know those I was shooting. They didn't know me. Therefore, I was not ashamed in front of them. It happened that you would shoot, come closer, and someone else would twitch. Then she shot him in the head again so that the person would not suffer. Sometimes several prisoners had a piece of plywood with the inscription “partisan” hung on their chests. Some people sang something before they died. After the executions, I cleaned the machine gun in the guardhouse or in the yard. There was plenty of ammunition..."

Often she had to shoot 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 also served in the war and was awarded orders and medals. The 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, Soviet justice was looking for Makarov all this time. And only many years later, an accident allowed investigators to get on her trail. She confessed to her crimes. In 1978, at the age of fifty-five, Tonka the Machine Gunner was shot by court.

Oleg SEMENOV, journalist (St. Petersburg), newspaper "Top Secret"

Some time ago, the Russian media disseminated a report that in Latvia, a former NKVD employee, and now a group I disabled person, 83-year-old Mikhail Farbtukh, accused of genocide against the indigenous people of this country, was arrested and taken to prison. The Latvian judicial machine did not take into account the fact that the pensioner could not move independently, and he had to be carried to the place of detention on a stretcher.

Few people remained indifferent when they learned about yet another manifestation of the “double morality” of the Riga authorities. But there was one person in Veliky Novgorod whom this information especially touched to the quick. Vasily MIKHEEV, a retired FSB colonel, for several decades headed the department investigating the acts of German punitive forces and their henchmen in the Novgorod region, and knew well that one of the most fierce detachments that shot more than 2,600 people near the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka, Batetsky district, was the team , consisting mainly of white emigrants and Latvians. Messrs. Klibus, Tsirulis, Janis and their other compatriots not only hunted for partisans, but also did not hesitate to kill Russian children. Moreover, they often spared the cartridges and simply stabbed them with bayonets...

Vasily Mikheev was sent to the state security agencies in 1950. A soldier who trampled half of Europe during the war did not need to be told about the atrocities and horrors of fascism, but what Vasily Petrovich had to face while serving in the KGB turned out to be much worse than what he saw at the front. Then everything was clear: there is an enemy in front of you, you must destroy him. And now he had to look for these enemies among completely respectable people, tearing off their masks and presenting mountains of children's and women's bones and skulls as accusations.

During the Great Patriotic War, the territory of the Novgorod region was literally filled with intelligence, counterintelligence, punitive and propaganda German agencies. There were several reasons for this, including the close front-line zone and the partisan movement. There were about a dozen Jagdkommandos and punitive battalions alone. Moreover, the main personnel in them were Russians, Balts and other representatives of our multinational state.

In fact, the operational search for German collaborators and war criminals began immediately after the formation of the Novgorod region - in 1944. But several thousand criminal cases were opened, so the work of exposing the executioners dragged on for a long time. Not all of them appeared in court. Many criminals managed to hide abroad, start their own businesses, and become influential people. But still…

In 1965, one of the most high-profile cases was carried out, which had resonance throughout Europe. This was the case of Erwin Schüle, an Oberleutnant in Hitler's army, convicted in 1949 by a Soviet court and then expelled from the country. If only we knew then that soon our Ministry of Foreign Affairs will unsuccessfully seek the extradition of this criminal based on newly discovered facts of crimes in the Chudovsky district of the Novgorod region! But, alas...

The most interesting thing is that, despite the court’s ruling, Schule managed to make a dizzying career in Germany: he was the head of the country’s Central Department for the Investigation of... Nazi crimes, and all the prosecutors of West Germany were subordinate to him! And although the special services failed to get the German authorities to extradite the criminal, copies of the interrogation reports of witnesses, photographs and other materials nevertheless forced the German authorities to remove the executioner from the political arena.

Another murderer, already our compatriot, the former commander of the 667th punitive battalion “Shelon” Alexander Riess lived quite comfortably in the USA, where he died, undisturbed by anyone, in 1984. And during the war... The battalion and its commander proved themselves in many punitive operations, for which they received high praise from the fascist command as “a reliable and combat-ready formation that successfully solved the tasks assigned to it.” The document “Evaluation of Battalion 667, volunteer rangers,” which fell into the hands of the Soviet command, says: “Since the beginning of August 1942, the battalion has been continuously participating in battles. In winter, 60 percent of the combat personnel were put on skis and fighter teams were formed from them.”

One of the Sheloni operations, carried out on December 19, 1942, became one of the most brutal actions in the Novgorod region. On this day, punitive forces dealt with the population of the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok in the Poddorsky (then Belebelkovsky) district. First, the villages were shelled with mortars, and then a massive “cleansing” began, during which Riess and his men shot people at point-blank range and threw grenades at their houses. The survivors - about 100 old men, women and children - were driven onto the ice of the Polist River and shot... In total, 253 people died in these villages, and the responsibility for their death lay with Alexander Ivanovich (Iogannovich) Risse.

Residents of the destroyed villages were randomly buried in the spring of 1943 in common pits. Time has changed the area, a young forest has appeared. But still, during the exhumation 20 years later, four burials were discovered. And although the examination was carried out by strong, healthy men, many of them could not restrain their feelings when children’s heads appeared one after another from the clay mess (due to the peculiarities of the soil, the remains were poorly decomposed), luxurious girlish braids and toys. Apparently, the kids went to their death, hiding from bullets, some with a ball, and some with a toy bear...

All materials from these crimes and evidence of Risse’s involvement in them were handed over to the American authorities. Representatives of the US Department of Justice already intended to arrive in Novgorod to verify the reliability of testimony about his atrocities. But... The US administration has changed, and for some reason it suddenly became unprofitable for it to extradite war criminals. And Riess remained free, and his children and grandchildren - now the Rysovs - are still alive and well: some in Italy, some in Crimea...

However, not all fighters of the “Shelon” detachment managed to get off so easily. Vasily Mikheev says:

“Although the criminals tried to stay away from their homes, did not maintain contact with relatives, and often changed their place of residence and surnames, we still managed to pick up their trail. Here, for example, is the titanic work of conspiracy carried out by Pavel Aleksashkin, a close associate of Alexander Risse. At one time, he received awards from the Germans and was even sent to Belarus for special services, where he commanded a punitive battalion. After the war, he was very quickly condemned for serving with the Germans (just that!). And after serving the minimum sentence, he settled in the Yaroslavl region.

But one day, while investigating episodes of the case of the murder of partisan Tatyana Markova and her friend by punitive forces, we needed Aleksashkin’s testimony. Imagine our surprise when, in response to our request, Yaroslavl colleagues reported that Aleksashkin was listed as... a participant in the Second World War, received all the awards and benefits granted to veterans, spoke at schools, talking about his “combat past”! I had to tell people about the true “exploits” of the veteran...

By the way, almost every second policeman or punisher passed himself off as war veterans. Pavel Testov, for example, had medals “For Victory over Germany” and “20 Years of Victory”. But in fact, in 1943, he took the oath of allegiance to Nazi Germany and served in the Jagdkommando. On November 26, 1943, this detachment carried out a punitive action against residents of the villages of Doskino, Tanina Gora and Torchilovo, Batetsky district, who were hiding from being hijacked to Germany in the Pandrino tract. There they were attacked by Testov and his comrades, armed to the teeth. They pushed people out of dugouts and shot them. And 19-year-old Sasha Karaseva and her sister Katya were torn apart alive, tied by their legs to bent trees. Then they burned all the corpses.

Another “honest citizen,” Mikhail Ivanov, a native of the village of Paulino, Starorussky district, who before the war worked as a guard at the Borovichi correctional colony, forced operatives to run after him through cities and villages for several decades. His biography was, in general, common for many German henchmen: he was drafted into the army, was surrounded, from where he went straight to his home as a police officer in the Utushinsky volost, then a punitive battalion and again executions, robberies, arrests, burning villages...

After that, he could no longer sit still and wait for them to come for him. Minsk region, Borovichi, Krustpils (Latvia), Leninabad, Chelyabinsk and Arkhangelsk regions, Kazakhstan - everywhere Ivanov left his mark. Moreover, he ran not alone, but with his partner and six children whom they managed to give birth to over the years of wandering. But the unlucky dad still had to leave his large family and go to places not so remote.

“I’ve been retired for quite a long time,” says Vasily Mikheev, “but many of my unfinished cases still haunt me. Today, war criminals are no longer wanted, and many of them have died. And without that, the intelligence services have enough worries. But crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations. And if now the country bows its head low to those who fell victims of political repression and clears their names of slander and shame, then the names of executioners and murderers should also be known to people. At least for the sake of those children who shielded themselves from bullets on the ice with teddy bears...

(Vladimir Maksimov, AiF)

Historical reference:

Battalion "Shelon" of Abwehrgruppe No. 111.
Commander - Red Army Major Alexander Riess (pseudonyms: Romanov, Kharm, Hart / Hart).
Formed as an anti-partisan detachment.
In October 1942, transferred to the Wehrmacht as the 667th ROA battalion, and served as the basis for the formation of the 16th Jaeger Regiment of the 16th Army.
Reconnaissance detachment of department 1C 56 TK.
Commander - N. G. Chavchavadze. Reformed into the 567th reconnaissance squadron of the ROA of the 56th Tank Corps.
As part of the 1st Division of the ROA KONR since the end of 1944.
In 1945-47 he acted as part of the UPA, broke into Austria in 1947.
Russian combat detachment (battalion) AG-107.
Security company AG-107.
Composition: 90 people.
Commanders: Major of the Red Army Klyuchansky, Captain of the Red Army Shat, Senior Lieutenant of the Red Army Chernutsky.
Intelligence school AG-101.
Commanders - Captain Pillui, Captain of the Red Army Pismenny.
AG - 114 "Dromedary" - Armenian.
Commander - Major General "Dro" - Kananyan.
Courses AG-104.
Chief - Major of the Red Army Ozerov.
Formed at the end of 1941 by Red Army Major A.I. Riess as the Shelon battalion of Abwehrgruppe No. 111. Transferred to the Wehrmacht as the 667th Russian battalion.
Cossack battalion of Abwehrgruppe No. 218.
Oriental Ministry propagandist course in Woolheide.
Chief - Colonel Antonov (Chief of Staff of the KONR Internal Troops).
Russian combat detachment (battalion) AG No. 111, commander Red Army Major Alexander Riss. In 1942 - 667th ROA battalion of the Wehrmacht.

The official name of the unit is the Eastern Jaeger 667th Battalion “Shelon”. It was formed in February 1942 at the Dno station, in the upper reaches of Shelon. Consisted of six companies of one hundred people each. The battalion was commanded by former Red Army captain Alexander Riss. The prisoners of war and volunteers selected for service were distinguished by their fierce cruelty. The list of documented executions they carried out barely fit on eight typewritten pages. The mass execution of at least 253 residents of the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok on the ice of Polisti on December 19, 1942 stands out.

One of the first volunteers of the Shelon battalion was G. M. Gurvich. A Jew by nationality, Grigory Moiseevich Gurvich, changed his name to Grigory Matveevich Gurevich. He was particularly cruel: the investigation established his participation in the execution of at least 25 people.

The subjective side of betrayal is based on the personal characteristics of the collaborators. At various times, state security agencies tracked down and prosecuted more than 100 people for the aforementioned punitive battalion “Shelon”. They all had different pre-war fates, they all ended up in the battalion due to different circumstances. If we talk about the detachment commander, Alexander Ivanovich Risse, then based on the materials of the search case, a conclusion may arise about his resentment against the Soviet regime. A German by nationality and a Red Army officer, he was arrested in 1938 on suspicion of belonging to the German intelligence agencies, but was released from custody for lack of evidence in 1940. However, when a person at the beginning of the war is sent to the front, where he voluntarily goes over to the enemy’s side, and then methodically engages in executions and torture of exclusively civilians, is awarded two iron crosses, medals and rises to the rank of major, then a big question arises regarding such a kind of revenge against Stalin’s regime.
Or another punisher - Grigory Gurvich (aka Gurevich), a Jew by nationality, managed to pass himself off as a Ukrainian - according to eyewitnesses, he was so cruel and unpredictable that his actions caused fear even among his colleagues.

Among the punitive forces there were many Russians, even residents of the Sheloni deployment areas.

There are few Novgorodians left who remember the trial that took place in the building of the Novgorod Drama Theater in December 1947. At that time, there were nineteen soldiers of the Nazi army in the dock. At that trial, they also talked about the 667th punitive battalion “Shelon”, among whose leaders was a traitor to the Motherland, former captain of the Soviet Army Alexander Riss. Vasily Petrovich had to work a lot, looking for participants in atrocities from the battalion under his command.

667th punitive battalion "Shelon", operating in 1942 - 1943. in the southern Ilmen region, destroyed about 40 settlements. The punitive forces took a direct part in the execution of civilians in the villages of Bychkovo, Pochinok, Zahody, Petrovo, Nivki, Posoblyaevo, and Pustoshka.
The search for punitive forces, which began during the Great Patriotic War, continued until the early 80s. The last trial took place in 1982.

Ice battle on Polisti

...The massacre of civilians in the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok, Poddorsky district, was unparalleled in its cruelty. The villages were shelled with mortars, and then the punitive forces burst in and began throwing grenades at people. They drove the surviving children, women and old people onto the ice of the Polist River and shot them almost point-blank with machine guns. Then 253 people were killed and villages were burned to the ground. These bastards could not even imagine that anyone could survive, but some still survived. They crawled on the bloody ice and survived to tell about what happened on that terrible Epiphany - January 19, 1942.

On December 16, 1942, in the area of ​​the villages of Pochinok and Bychkovo, a battle took place between partisans and a punitive detachment, as a result of which 17 Germans and police were killed.
On December 19, 1942, a punitive detachment with two tanks and one armored vehicle burst into these villages. The population was asked to prepare for eviction within 30 minutes.
By order of the head of the punitive detachment, about 300 people were driven to the Polist River and opened fire on them with machine guns, machine guns and mortars. The ice on the river collapsed due to mine explosions. The dead and wounded drowned and were carried away under the ice. The Germans did not allow the removal of the corpses remaining on the ice in the spring of 1943; they were carried away into Lake Ilmen.”
Tamara Pavlovna Ivanova, born in 1924, a native of the village of Pochinok, Belebelkovsky (now Poddorsky) district, Leningrad (now Novgorod) region, was seriously wounded by punitive forces on December 19, 1942 during the execution of residents of the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok. Eleven of her relatives were killed. Her story about the tragedy on the Polist River during the court hearing excited not only those present in the hall, but also the composition of the court. Simple, uncomplicated poems written by witness Ivanova showed the full tragedy of the situation, the role of Nazi collaborators in the destruction of civilians:

We went to our death and
We said goodbye to each other,
We walked quietly behind each other,
And the children smiled so tenderly,
And they didn’t know where they were taking us.
We were taken to the river, onto the ice,
They ordered us to stand in place in formation,
The enemy pointed a machine gun in front of us
It began to rain leaden rain...

T.P. Ivanova acted as a witness in criminal cases against Grigory Gurevich (Gurvich), Nikolai Ivanov, Konstantin Grigoriev, Pavel Burov, Egor Timofeev, Konstantin Zakharevich. Her personal tragedy during the war was later reflected in the documentary film Case No. 21.
On November 26, 1943, the “Yagdkommando-38” unit, formed from Hitler’s accomplices, carried out a punitive operation against residents of the villages of Doskino, Tanina Gora and Torchinovo, Batetsky district, Leningrad region. The punitive forces attacked the forest camp of civilians, surrounded it, and killed those who tried to escape. In total, punitive forces killed more than 150 people in the Pandrino tract.

Retired KGB Colonel Vasily Mikheev participated in the investigation of criminal cases related to the betrayal and execution of Medved underground fighters. For thirty years, Vasily Petrovich was engaged in the search for former SS men, punishers disguised under false names in different parts of the world. One was found in West Germany, another in Argentina, a third in the USA... And all the long years of work in the KGB, a terrible picture from the past stood in his eyes.
- It was in the cold autumn of 1943. The fascist henchman Vaska Likhomanov rode on horseback and dragged a fifteen-year-old boy behind him on a rope: over bumps, through mud... We were on reconnaissance and could not help, we had no right. Even then I said to myself: “If I don’t die before victory, I’ll lay down my whole life so that not a single bastard remains unpunished on our land.”

He went along with the 4th Tank Army along a long front line from the Kursk Bulge to Prague and survived. The reconnaissance motorcyclist of the 2nd motorcycle company, awarded with many military orders and medals, after the Great Victory, began a new offensive operation to search for and bring to justice all state criminals who, during the war, destroyed thousands of innocent people and burned hundreds of villages in the Novgorod region. The professional memory of a security officer stores all the episodes of his investigative counterintelligence work. He remembers not only the names of the criminals, but also the names of villages, cities and regions where they were hiding from retribution, the names of their relatives and even their fictitious names.
“The search for traitors to the Motherland,” says Vasily Petrovich, “began immediately after the liberation of the region, in 1944. Only in the territory of our small region was created a whole network of punitive Jagdkommandos and Sonderkommandos, the 667th Shelon battalion, the Volotovo police, which were distinguished by special atrocities, SS and SD teams, the gendarmerie and other formations. They managed to exterminate so many of our people that it’s amazing how we survived.
There are few Novgorodians left who remember the trial that took place in the building of the drama theater in December 1947. At that time, there were nineteen soldiers of the Nazi army in the dock. At that trial, they also talked about the 667th punitive battalion “Shelon”, among whose leaders was a traitor to the Motherland, former captain of the Soviet Army Alexander Riss. Vasily Petrovich had to work a lot, looking for participants in atrocities from the battalion under his command.

The massacre of civilians in the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok, Poddorsky district, was unparalleled in its cruelty. The villages were shelled with mortars, and then the punitive forces burst in and began throwing grenades at people. They drove the surviving children, women and old people onto the ice of the Polist River and shot them almost point-blank with machine guns. Then 253 people were killed and villages were burned to the ground. These bastards could not even imagine that anyone could survive, but some still survived. They crawled on the bloody ice and survived to tell about what happened on that terrible Epiphany - January 19, 1942.
“This crime had to be investigated with extraordinary scrupulousness,” recalls Mikheev. - We looked for documents about the 667th battalion in our archives and even in archives abroad. We carefully reviewed 40 criminal cases against previously convicted punishers. The criminals tried to stay away from their homes, and even further away from the places where they committed massacres. In that case, we interrogated more than a hundred people, drew up maps of the execution sites, carried out exhumations and examinations. During this investigation, I became convinced for the first time how arrogant and cynical these people were; they cannot even be called that. Our employees barely managed to restrain themselves from anger and indignation when the criminals came for interrogations in military uniform with Soviet orders and medals. Among them was Pavel Aleksashkin.

Former senior lieutenant of the Red Army Aleksashkin surrendered in 1941. He voluntarily enlisted in the Shelon punitive battalion. He was close to Riess and received awards from the Germans. Then he was convicted, but after serving the minimum term, he settled in Siberia, and then in the Yaroslavl town of Petushki. According to our counterintelligence, he was an eyewitness to many executions on our territory. Aleksashkin was summoned to Novgorod as a witness.
“We were shocked,” recalls Vasily Petrovich. “I even thought that the wrong person had been called in for questioning by mistake.” A man in military uniform appeared before us, only without shoulder straps. Several lines of order bars were screwed onto his uniform, and on the other side there were badges with the symbols of the Great Patriotic War. We rolled our eyes and began to clarify... No, this is the same punisher Aleksashkin. In order to extract testimony from him, we even had to take this cadre to the execution sites, otherwise he would refuse everything. And even more stunned was the response of our Yaroslavl colleagues to our request. They reported that Aleksashkin, it turns out, was listed as a participant in the war, received awards through military registration and enlistment offices, visited schools, colleges and universities, where he told young people about his “heroic” deeds. The local government gave him a preferential loan to build a house and provided him with building materials. They even gave him custom street lighting. In general, Pasha lived happily ever after in Petushki. Only after our intervention was he deprived of all his awards and the residents of the city explained who he really was... And he was far from alone.

Historical reference:

667th Russian Jaeger Ost-Battalion "Shelon"
(field mail - Feldpost - 33581A)

Place and time of formation:
in the area of ​​the Dno railway junction station in the villages of Skugry and Nekhotovo (Novgorod region) a few km from the city of Dno in the fall of 1942.

Contingent:
local volunteer residents and prisoners of war from among the prisoners of the camp near the village. Skugrs from 19-37 years old. Most of them were previously used by intelligence services in punitive squads or intelligence networks. They took the oath, received a uniform, and received all types of allowances. Subsequently, the base was replenished by mobilizations of the local population, as well as military personnel of the disbanded Russians of the 310th field gendarmerie battalion, the 410th security battalion, and the anti-partisan company of the headquarters of the 16th German army.

Structure:
headquarters in the village Krivitsy, Volotovsky district, Novgorod region. 6 companies, each with 100 people.

Region of operation:
Dnovsky, Volotovsky, Dedovichsky districts. Since the beginning of 1942, he was constantly in battles Serbolovo-Tatinets-Lake Polisto. In the spring of 1943, he took part in the “Deforestation” operation against partisans in the rear of the 16th Army, later in Operation “North”. Constant executions of local residents and partisans.

Dislocation:
Stage 1 - southwest of the Leningrad region. Headquarters and 2 companies in the villages of Aleksino and Nivki, Dedovichi district, a stronghold in the village of Petrovo, Belebelkinsky district.
In November 1943, he was transferred to Skagen (Denmark) in the north of the Jutland Peninsula, where he guarded the sea coast as part of the 714th Grenadier Regiment of the ROA (its 3rd battalion). In the winter of 1945, he was merged into one of the regiments of the 2nd division of the KONR Armed Forces. Dissolved in Czechoslovakia.

Weapons:
rifles, machine guns, grenades, MG heavy and light machine guns, company and battalion mortars (weapons of Soviet and German production).

Guardianship:
Abvergruppa-310 at the 16th Air Force (Feldpost 14700), 753rd Eastern Regiment (later the Findeisen Central Bank), Koryuk-584, department 1C of the 16th Army.

Command:
1. Riess Alexander Ivanovich (Alexander Riess), German, born in 1904, native of the village of Alty-Parmak, Evpatoria district, Taurida province (later - the village of Panino, Razdolnensky district of Crimea). A former captain of the Red Army, in 1938 he was arrested on suspicion of belonging to German intelligence agencies, spent 2 years in a pre-trial detention center, after which he was released due to lack of evidence. He was reinstated in the Red Army and appointed commander of the battalion of the 524th Infantry Regiment, formed in the city of Bereznyaki, Perm Region. In July 1941, in the first battle, battalion commander Riess voluntarily went over to the side of the Germans in the battle near Idritsa (Pskov region). In his own words, he pointed out to the Germans all the communists among the prisoners captured in the battle, after which they were shot.
Since August 1941, he served in the Abwehr as a teacher in Abwehrgruppe-301, Major Hofmeier and AG-111. Nicknames "Romanov", aka "Hart" ("Hard"). He was involved in the preparation and deployment of agents from the southern shore of the lake. Ilmen to the rear of Soviet troops. During the deployment of AG-310 in the village. Mston personally shot and tortured local residents of the Starorussky district, accusing them of helping Red Army intelligence officers.
By order of the leadership, he took an active part in the formation of the 667th Russian eastern battalion “Shelon”, named after the nearby river. At the first stage he commanded the 2nd company of the battalion, and from April 1943 he headed the battalion. In this position, he also repeatedly personally shot citizens suspected of having connections with the partisans.
Awarded two Iron Crosses and several medals. Major (“Sonderführer”) of the Wehrmacht.
He was on the list of wanted state criminals under number 665. After the end of the war, he lived in Germany, in the cities of Bad Aibling, Kreuzburg and Rosenheim, and participated in the work of the NTS. In 1949, he went to the United States for permanent residence, received citizenship, and lived in Cleveland, Ohio under the surname Riess.

2. The first commander of the newly formed battalion was German Major Karl Schiwek, companies - 1st Captain Meyer, 3rd - Lieutenant Foerst, 4th Lieutenant Zalder, 5th - Lieutenant Walger (Walger), 6th - Oberleutnant Kollit, 2nd company - Sonderfuehrer Riess, adjutant to the battalion commander Daniel, orderly officer - Lieutenant Schumacher, translators - Sonderfuehrers Schmidt and Lavendel. A few months later, in connection with the successful combat adaptation of personnel to service in the German army, Alexander Riess was appointed commander of the 667th battalion, Captain Mayer as an adviser, company commanders - 1st - Sidorenko, 2nd - Radchenko (it was to him that Riess handed over his company), 3rd - Koshelap, 4th - Tsalder.

3. Company commanders - N. Koshelap - born 1922, native. Kyiv region, commander of the 3rd company of the battalion, captain, graduated from the ROA school in Dabendorf, after which he was appointed commander of the 3rd company of the 667th East Battalion; awarded German medals. Arrested, sentenced to 25 years, released in 1960, lived in Vorkuta.
The commander of the reconnaissance group (Yagd-team) of the battalion, Konstantin Grigoriev, surrendered in August 1941, studied at reconnaissance schools in Vyatsati and Vikhula, served in the punitive detachment of Lieutenant Shpitsky, after his defeat by partisans in February 1942, one of the first volunteers 667th East Battalion.
Participant in a number of successful anti-partisan operations, took part in mass executions. After being seriously wounded and cured, he served in AG-203, preparing to be deployed to the Soviet rear in the area of ​​Lake. Balaton; due to health reasons, he was demobilized at the end of 1944 with the rank of Wehrmacht sergeant major with the Iron Cross 2nd class, medals “For the Winter Campaign in the East”, “For Bravery” (twice), the Assault Badge, and the Badge “For Wounding”. After the end of the war, he lived in Germany, was convicted by a German court of a criminal offense (smuggling), during the investigation he informed that he was a Soviet citizen and applied for repatriation, posing as a victim of fascism. While traveling with a group of repatriates, he committed several thefts and was convicted by a Soviet court. For similar crimes, a term in prison was added to the original term. In 1956 he was released, arrived in Leningrad, and committed another crime. During the investigation, G. became interested in the KGB. On May 30, 1960, at the trial, the military tribunal of the Leningrad Region sentenced G. to capital punishment.

Deputy battalion commander - Pavel Radchenko, aka Viktor Moiseenko, born in 1919, born in the village. Grushevki, Srebnyansky district, Chernigov region, Ukrainian, former soldier of the Red Army. At the first stage of the existence of the 667th battalion, he commanded a platoon of the 2nd company. In March 1944 he headed the 2nd company. At the same time, he was deputy battalion commander (A.I. Rissa) and, in his absence, acted as battalion commander. In 1945, after Rissa left the battalion, he was appointed its commander.
In the summer of 1943, Radchenko’s company burned the village of Lyady, Utorgoshsky district of NO. In 1945, R. led the battalion, was awarded the Life Code and medals, and was a Wehrmacht captain. After the war, he also lived in Cleveland (USA) under the name Viktor Moiseenko. A search case was opened at the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR for the Chernigov region, but was terminated due to the identification of the person involved living abroad. Conducted correspondence with relatives, controlled by censorship.