Traitors to the Soviet army. Soviet women who betrayed their Motherland in the Great Patriotic War

In reality, of course, there were more. Animal fear for their lives in war conditions pushed hundreds of thousands of people of different ranks to betrayal. Tens of thousands of people fought against their own compatriots in the Great Patriotic War. Thousands killed their fellow men in the process. Hundreds did it intelligently and with animal interest. Dozens were in command of organized betrayal, and this embarrassed them at all.

Vlasov: caressed and hanged

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 extradited Soviet Union, he ended his life in a noose - in 1947 the chieftain 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 leads, in fact, the same amorphous structure as Shkuro’s. Krasnov's role in World War II and its end life path similar to the fate of Shkuro - after being extradited by the British, he was hanged in the courtyard of the 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 official version, for showing excessive zeal in looting.

Anka 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 military school communications. 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. Settled in well 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 was revealed. In 1986, Vasyura was shot by a tribunal.

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In some historical research it is alleged that on the side of Hitler during the period World War II 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, and 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 to support " new order“Auxiliary units and German military police remained in the occupied territory. Naturally, the Germans did not know local realities and were poorly oriented 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 Soviet military uniform with 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? Representatives of, relatively speaking, five categories of the population different in their goals and views were included in it.

The first is the so-called “ideological” opponents of Soviet power. Among them, former White Guards and criminals, convicted under the so-called political articles of the then Criminal Code, 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 got the opportunity to kill the “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 property.

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 understood perfectly well that their lives depended on their situation at the front, and they tried to take advantage of 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 special group 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: a swastika on the headdress laurel wreath, on the left sleeve there is 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 Chernihiv region, total number 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. Technical side 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 from 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.

Interesting further fate Khatyn executioner. 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 2,200 soldiers under his command, having previously shot all the Germans and especially 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"

A person always has the right to choose. Even in the most terrible moments of your life, at least two decisions remain. Sometimes it's a choice between life and death. A terrible death, allowing one to preserve honor and conscience, and long life in fear that one day it will become known at what price it was bought.

Everyone decides for themselves. Those who choose death are no longer destined to explain to others the reasons for their action. They go into oblivion with the thought that there is no other way, and loved ones, friends, descendants will understand this.

Those who bought their lives at the cost of betrayal, on the contrary, are very often talkative, find a thousand justifications for their actions, sometimes even write books about it.

Everyone decides for themselves who is right, submitting exclusively to one judge - their 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 fellow villagers - he was simply drowned in a pond. Zoya's father, who began studying at the seminary, was not imbued with hatred of the Soviets, and decided to change his cassock to secular attire by marrying a local teacher.

In 1929, the family moved to Siberia, and a year later, thanks to the help of relatives, they settled in Moscow. In 1933, Zoya'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 especially stood out in this.

She studied well at school and was especially interested in history and literature. At the same time, Zoya’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 Zoya caused misunderstanding among her classmates, and the girl, in turn, was so worried that she came down with a nervous illness.

Zoya's illness also affected her classmates - feeling guilty, they helped her catch up school curriculum so that she doesn’t stay for a 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. In the years Civil War a Bolshevik teacher fell into the hands of the whites and was brutally tortured. The story of Tatyana 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, into 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 first grade, because of shyness she could not say her last name - Parfenova. Classmates began shouting “Yes, she’s Makarova!”, meaning that Tony’s father’s name is Makar.

So, with the light hand of the teacher, at that time perhaps 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 - Maria Popova, a nurse from the Chapaev division, who once in battle actually had to replace a killed machine gunner.

After graduating from school, Antonina went to study in Moscow, where the beginning of the Great Patriotic War found her.

Both Zoya and Tonya, raised on Soviet ideals, volunteered to fight the Nazis.

Tonya. In the boiler

But by the time on October 31, 1941, 18-year-old Komsomol member Kosmodemyanskaya came to the assembly point to send saboteurs to school, 19-year-old Komsomol member Makarova had already known all the horrors of the “Vyazemsky Cauldron.”

After the hardest battles, completely surrounded by the entire unit, only a soldier found himself next to the young nurse Tonya 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 on whatever they had, and sometimes stole. The soldier did not stand on ceremony with Tonya, making her his “camp 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 18-year-old Komsomol member Kosmodemyanskaya arrived at the assembly point to send saboteurs to school, 19-year-old Komsomol member Makarova had already known all the horrors of the “Vyazemsky Cauldron.” Photo: wikipedia.org / Bundesarchiv

Tonya was not expelled from the Red Well, but local residents and so it was full of worries. But the strange girl did not try to go to the partisans, did not strive to make her way to ours, but strived to make love with one of the men remaining in the village. Having turned the locals against her, Tonya was forced to leave.

When Tony's wanderings ended, Zoe was no longer in the world. The story of her personal battle with the Nazis turned out to be very short.

Zoya. Komsomol member-saboteur

After 4 days of training at a sabotage school (there was no time for more - the enemy stood 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 area, carried out the first successful sabotage - mining the road.

On November 17, a command order was issued ordering the destruction of residential buildings behind enemy lines to a depth of 40-60 kilometers in order to drive the Germans out into the cold. This directive was criticized mercilessly during perestroika, saying that it should have actually turned against the civilian population in the occupied territories. But we 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 Western Front headquarters.” Photo: www.russianlook.com

On November 18, a sabotage group, which included Zoya, received orders to burn several settlements, including the village of Petrishchevo. While performing the task, the group came under fire, and two people remained with Zoya - the group commander Boris Krainov and a fighter Vasily Klubkov.

On November 27, Krainov gave the order to set fire to three houses in Petrishchevo. He and Zoya successfully completed the task, and Klubkov was captured by the Germans. However, they missed each other at the meeting point. Zoya, left alone, decided to go to Petrishchevo again and commit another arson.

During the first raid of the saboteurs, they managed to destroy a German stable with horses, and also set fire to a couple more houses where the Germans were quartered.

But after this, the Nazis ordered the local residents to remain 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 noise and the girl was grabbed. For this, Sviridov was rewarded with a bottle of vodka.

Zoya. Last hours

The Germans tried to find out from Zoya who she was and where the rest of the group was. 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 partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Photo: RIA Novosti / David Sholomovich

She was stripped naked, beaten, flogged with a belt - no sense. At night, wearing only a nightgown, barefoot, they drove around in the cold, hoping that the girl would break down, but she continued to remain silent.

They also found 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. After swearing at the girl, they tried to beat the already half-dead Zoya. The mistress of the house intervened and kicked the “avengers” out. As a farewell, they threw a pot of slop that stood at the entrance at the prisoner.

On the morning of November 29, German officers made another attempt to interrogate Zoya, but again without success.

At about half past ten in the morning she was taken outside, with a sign “House Arsonist” hung on her chest. Zoya was led to the place of execution by two soldiers who held her - after the torture she herself could hardly stand on her feet. Smirnova appeared again at the gallows, scolding the girl and hitting her on the leg with a stick. This time the woman was driven away by the Germans.

The Nazis began filming Zoya with a camera. The exhausted girl turned to the villagers who had been driven to the terrible spectacle:

Citizens! Don't stand there, don't look, but we 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 led to execution. Photo: www.russianlook.com

Zoya climbed onto the box herself, after which a noose was thrown over her. At this moment she shouted again:

- No matter how much you hang us, you can’t hang us all, there are 170 million of us. 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. In an instant it was all over.

Tonya. From prostitute to executioner

Tonya Makarova’s wanderings ended in the area of ​​the village of Lokot in the Bryansk region. The notorious “Lokot Republic”, an administrative-territorial formation of Russian collaborators, operated here. In essence, these were the same German lackeys as in other places, only more clearly formalized.

A police patrol detained Tonya, but they did not suspect her of being a partisan or underground woman. She attracted the attention of the police, who took her in, gave her food, drink and rape. 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 for the police for long - one day, drunk, they took her out into the yard and put her behind a Maxim machine gun. There were people standing in front of the machine gun - men, women, old people, children. She was ordered to shoot. For Tony, who completed not only nursing courses, but also machine gunners, this was not a big deal. True, the dead drunk girl didn’t really understand what she was doing. But, nevertheless, she coped with the task.

Execution of prisoners. Photo: www.russianlook.com

The next day, Tonya found out that she was no longer a slut in front of the police, but an official - an executioner with a salary of 30 German marks and with her own bed.

The Lokot Republic ruthlessly fought 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 that 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 policemen wanted to take on this work. And here Tonya, who appeared out of nowhere with her passion for a machine gun, came in very handy.

Tonya. Executioner-machine gunner's routine

The girl did not go crazy, but on the contrary, felt that her dream had come true. And let Anka shoot her enemies, but she shoots women and children - the war will write off everything! But her life finally got better.

Her daily routine was as follows: in the morning, shooting 27 people with a machine gun, finishing off the survivors with a pistol, cleaning weapons, in the evening schnapps and dancing in a German club, and at night making love with some cute German guy 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 made it difficult to wear.

However, sometimes Tonya allowed a “marriage” - several children managed to survive because, due to their small stature, the bullets passed over their heads. The children were taken out along with the corpses by local residents who were burying the dead and handed over to the partisans. Rumors about a female executioner, “Tonka the machine gunner”, “Tonka the Muscovite” spread throughout the area. Local partisans even announced a hunt for the executioner, but were unable to reach her.

In total, about 1,500 people became victims of Antonina Makarova.

Zoya. From obscurity to immortality

For the first time a journalist wrote about Zoya’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.

Zoya's corpse hung at the execution site for almost a month. Drunken German soldiers did not leave the girl alone, even when she was dead: they stabbed her with knives and cut off her breasts. After another such disgusting act, even the German command’s patience ran out: local residents were ordered to remove the body and bury it.

Monument to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, erected at the site of the death of the partisan, in the village of Petrishchevo. Photo: RIA Novosti / A. Cheprunov

After the liberation of Petrishchevo and publication in Pravda, it was decided to establish the name of the heroine and the exact circumstances of her death.

The act of identifying the corpse was drawn up on February 4, 1942. It was precisely established that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was executed in the village of Petrishchevo. The same Pyotr Lidov spoke about this in the article “Who Was Tanya” in Pravda on February 18.

Two days before, on February 16, 1942, after all the circumstances of the death had been established, 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, beginning the liberation of the Bryansk region. This did not bode well for the girl, but then she conveniently fell ill with syphilis, and the Germans sent her to the rear so that she would not re-infect the valiant sons of Greater Germany.

In the German hospital, however, it also soon became uncomfortable - Soviet troops They were approaching so quickly that only the Germans had time to evacuate, and there was no longer any concern for the accomplices.

Realizing this, Tonya escaped from the hospital, again finding herself surrounded, but now Soviet. But her survival skills were honed - she managed to obtain documents that all this time she had been a nurse in a Soviet hospital.

Who said that the formidable SMERSH punished everyone? Nothing of the kind! Tonya successfully managed to enlist in a Soviet hospital, where early in 1945 a young soldier, a real war hero, fell in love with her.

The guy proposed to Tonya, she agreed, and, having gotten married, after the end of the war, the young couple left for the Belarusian city of Lepel, her husband’s homeland.

This is how the female executioner Antonina Makarova disappeared, and her place was taken by an honored veteran Antonina Ginzburg.

Soviet investigators learned about the monstrous acts of “Tonka the 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 the identities of only two hundred could be established.

They interrogated witnesses, checked, clarified - but they could not get on the trail of the female punisher.

Tonya. Exposure 30 years later

Meanwhile, Antonina Ginzburg led an ordinary life Soviet man- lived, worked, raised two daughters, even met with schoolchildren, talking about her heroic military past. Of course, without mentioning the actions of “Tonka the Machine Gunner”.

Antonina Makarova. Photo: Public Domain

The KGB spent more than three decades searching for her, but found her almost by accident. A certain citizen Parfenov, going abroad, submitted forms with information about his relatives. There, among the solid Parfenovs, Antonina Makarova, after her husband Ginzburg, was listed as her own sister.

Yes, how that teacher’s mistake helped Tonya, how many years thanks to it she remained out of reach of justice!

The KGB operatives worked brilliantly - it was impossible to blame an innocent person for such atrocities. Antonina Ginzburg was checked from all sides, witnesses were secretly brought to Lepel, even a former policeman-lover. And only after they all confirmed that Antonina Ginzburg was “Tonka the Machine Gunner”, she was arrested.

She didn’t deny it, she talked about everything calmly, and said that nightmares didn’t torment her. She didn’t want to communicate with either her daughters or her husband. And the front-line husband ran around the authorities, threatening to file a complaint Brezhnev, even at the UN - he demanded the release of his beloved wife. Exactly until the investigators decided to tell him what his beloved Tonya was accused of.

After that, the dashing, dashing veteran turned gray and aged overnight. The family disowned Antonina Ginzburg and left Lepel. You wouldn’t wish what these people had to endure on your enemy.

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 female punisher.

Antonina herself was convinced that, due to the passage of time, the punishment could not be too severe; she even believed that she would receive suspended sentence. My only regret was that because of the shame I had to move again and change jobs. Even the investigators, knowing about Antonina Ginzburg’s exemplary post-war biography, believed that the court would show leniency. Moreover, 1979 was declared the Year of the Woman in the USSR, and since the war, not a single representative of the fairer sex has been executed in the country.

However, on November 20, 1978, the court sentenced Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg to capital punishment - execution.

At the trial, her guilt in the murder of 168 of those whose identities could be established was documented. More than 1,300 more remained unknown victims of “Tonka the 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 were 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.

There are collaborators and traitors in every war. World War II was no exception. Some went over to the enemy’s side for ideological reasons, others were attracted by material wealth, and others were forced to help the former enemy in order to save their lives and the lives of loved ones. Among those who changed the flag under which they fought were Soviet women.

The first document that dealt with the fight against collaboration was the order of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, issued on December 12, 1941, “On operational security service in areas liberated from enemy troops.” At the beginning of 1942, an explanation was issued about who should be registered. The list included:

• women who married Germans;
• keepers of brothels and brothels;
• persons who worked in German institutions and provided services to Germans;
• those who voluntarily left with the Nazis and members of their families.

Anyone who found themselves in occupied territory and was forced to work to get a piece of bread was suspected of treason. Such people could then bear the stigma of a potential traitor for the rest of their lives.

Many women who voluntarily or forcedly had sexual relations with the Germans were later shot, often along with their children. According to German documents, about 4 thousand women were shot during the liberation of Eastern Ukraine alone. Another German intelligence report spoke about the fate of the “traitors” in Kharkov: “Among them there are many girls who were friends with German soldiers, and especially those who were pregnant. Three witnesses were enough to eliminate them.”

Vera Pirozhkova

Vera Pirozhkova, who was born in Pskov in 1921, worked in the same newspaper “For the Motherland”. She got a job there immediately after the start of the occupation, first as a translator, then as an author. In her articles she glorified the German way of life under the Nazis and Germany.

In the first text, dedicated to the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Pirozhkova acted as an obvious anti-Semite: “The evil force of Jewry, which for centuries fed only on hatred and acted through intrigue, deception and terror, will not withstand the onslaught of the healthy, creative forces of the people.” This position found approval at the top, and Pirozhkova quickly advanced, becoming practically the political editor of the newspaper.

After the war, she studied in Munich and defended her dissertation. In the 90s she returned to Russia and now lives in St. Petersburg.

Svetlana Gaier

One of the most controversial women who can be categorized as a “traitor” at a stretch. Gaier was a very young girl when she went to work as a translator for the occupation authorities of Kyiv. She and her mother needed money; her father died after being imprisoned in a Soviet prison.

She worked on construction sites, translated for architects and scientists. In 1943 she went to Germany, where she was promised a scholarship. In Germany, she spent some time in a camp for workers from the eastern territories, but was released.

She studied literary criticism in Freiburg and became one of the most famous translators from Russian to German. Translated Dostoevsky's main novels into German.

Antonina Makarova (Tonka the Machine Gunner)

At the beginning of the war, the young nurse Antonina found herself surrounded. With soldier Fedorchuk, they wandered through the forests, trying to survive. After they reached the village, Fedorchuk went to his family, and the woman was left alone.

She again had to look for shelter. She ended up on the territory of the Lokot Republic, where the Germans liked it. Antonina was subjected to violence several times. Once she was forced to shoot prisoners - she knew how to use a machine gun, and she was also drunk. Having carried out such an order, Makarova turned out to be a “regular executioner.” She shot every morning. Quite quickly she even began to like the work.

Rumors about Tonka the Machine Gunner quickly spread throughout the area, but it was not possible to eliminate her. After the Germans retreated, Makarova obtained documents which showed that she had worked as a nurse throughout the war. The KGB was looking for her for several decades, but it was difficult to suspect the former punisher of the war veteran, exemplary wife and mother Antonina Ginzburg.

The KGB workers were helped by chance - Makarova’s brother, Parfenov, was planning to travel abroad. In the questionnaire, he indicated his sister Makarova (Ginsburg).

Her case was the only one in the USSR in which a female punisher appeared. Antonina was found guilty of murdering 168 people and was shot.

Many Soviet women worked as translators, journalists, and secretaries under the Germans. Their fates turned out differently. Some remained in exile forever, others were repatriated back to the Soviet Union, like Evgenia Polskaya, who came from Cossacks. Her husband was an ROA officer, and she herself worked at a newspaper. Some were able to “cross out” their ambiguous past and quietly live to old age.

During the Great Patriotic War in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union and countries Eastern Europe The Nazis and their henchmen from among the local traitors committed many war crimes against civilians and captured military personnel. The salvos of Victory had not yet been fired in Berlin, and the Soviet state security agencies were already faced with an important and rather difficult task - to investigate all the crimes of the Nazis, to identify and detain those responsible for them, and to bring them to justice.

The search for Nazi war criminals began during the Great Patriotic War and has not been completed to this day. After all, there are no time limits or statutes of limitations for the atrocities that the Nazis committed on Soviet soil. As soon as Soviet troops liberated the occupied territories, operational and investigative agencies immediately began working there, primarily the Smersh counterintelligence service. Thanks to the Smershevites, as well as military personnel and police officers, a large number of accomplices of Nazi Germany from among the local population were identified.

Former police officers received criminal convictions under Article 58 of the USSR Criminal Code and were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, usually from ten to fifteen years. Since the war-ravaged country needed workers, the death penalty was applied only to the most notorious and odious executioners. Many policemen served their time and returned home in the 1950s and 1960s. But some of the collaborators managed to avoid arrest by posing as civilians or even ascribing heroic biographies to participants in the Great Patriotic War as part of the Red Army.

For example, Pavel Aleksashkin commanded a punitive unit of policemen in Belarus. When the USSR won the Great Patriotic War, Aleksashkin was able to hide his personal participation in war crimes. He was given a short prison term for his service with the Germans. After his release from the camp, Aleksashkin moved to the Yaroslavl region and soon, plucking up courage, began to pose as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Having managed to get necessary documents, he began to receive all the benefits due to veterans, he was periodically awarded orders and medals, invited to speak at schools in front of Soviet children - to talk about his battle path. And the former Nazi punisher lied without a twinge of conscience, attributing to himself the exploits of others and carefully hiding his true face. But when the security authorities needed Aleksashkin’s testimony in the case of one of the war criminals, they made a request at his place of residence and found that the former policeman was pretending to be a veteran of the Great Patriotic War.

One of the first trials of Nazi war criminals took place on July 14-17, 1943 in Krasnodar. Still walking in full swing The Great Patriotic War, and in the Krasnodar cinema "Giant" there was a trial of eleven Nazi collaborators from the SS Sonderkommando "10-a". More than 7 thousand civilians of Krasnodar and Krasnodar region. The immediate leaders of the massacres were officers of the German Gestapo, but executions were carried out by executioners from among local traitors.

Vasily Petrovich Tishchenko, born in 1914, joined the occupation police in August 1942, then became a foreman of the SS Sonderkommando “10-a”, and later a Gestapo investigator. Nikolai Semenovich Pushkarev, born in 1915, served in the Sonderkommando as a squad commander, Ivan Anisimovich Rechkalov, born in 1911, evaded mobilization into the Red Army and, after the entry of German troops, joined the Sonderkommando. Grigory Nikitich Misan, born in 1916, was also a volunteer policeman, like the previously convicted Ivan Fedorovich Kotomtsev, born in 1918. Yunus Mitsukhovich Naptsok, born 1914, took part in the torture and execution of Soviet citizens; Ignatiy Fedorovich Kladov, born in 1911; Mikhail Pavlovich Lastovina, born in 1883; Grigory Petrovich Tuchkov, born in 1909; Vasily Stepanovich Pavlov, born in 1914; Ivan Ivanovich Paramonov, born 1923 The trial was quick and fair. On July 17, 1943, Tishchenko, Rechkalov, Pushkarev, Naptsok, Misan, Kotomtsev, Kladov and Lastovina were sentenced to capital punishment and on July 18, 1943, hanged in the central square of Krasnodar. Paramonov, Tuchkov and Pavlov received 20 years in prison.

However, other members of Sonderkommando 10-a then managed to escape punishment. Twenty years passed before the new process over Hitler's henchmen - the executioners who killed Soviet people. Nine people appeared in court - former policemen Alois Weich, Valentin Skripkin, Mikhail Eskov, Andrei Sukhov, Valerian Surguladze, Nikolai Zhirukhin, Emelyan Buglak, Uruzbek Dzampaev, Nikolai Psarev. All of them took part in the massacres of civilians in the Rostov region, Krasnodar region, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Valentin Skripkin lived in Taganrog before the war, was a promising football player, and with the beginning German occupation joined the police force. He hid until 1956, until the amnesty, and then legalized, worked at a bakery. It took six years of painstaking work for the security officers to establish: Skripkin personally participated in many murders of Soviet people, including the terrible massacre in Zmievskaya Balka in Rostov-on-Don.

Mikhail Eskov was a Black Sea sailor who took part in the defense of Sevastopol. Two sailors stood in a trench on Pesochnaya Bay against German tankettes. One sailor died and was buried in a mass grave, forever remaining a hero. Eskov was shell-shocked. This is how he ended up among the Germans, and then, out of despair, he enlisted in a Sonderkommando platoon and became a war criminal. In 1943, he was arrested for the first time - for serving in German auxiliary units, and was given ten years. In 1953, Eskov was released, only to be imprisoned again in 1963.

Nikolai Zhirukhin worked as a labor teacher in one of the schools in Novorossiysk since 1959, and in 1962 he graduated from the 3rd year of the Pedagogical Institute in absentia. He “split” out of his own stupidity, believing that after the amnesty of 1956 he would not face responsibility for serving the Germans. Before the war, Zhirukhin worked in the fire department, then he was mobilized and from 1940 to 1942. served as a clerk at the garrison guardhouse in Novorossiysk, and during the offensive of the German troops he defected to the side of the Nazis. Andrey Sukhov, formerly a veterinary paramedic. In 1943, he fell behind the Germans in the Tsimlyansk region. He was detained by the Red Army soldiers, but Sukhov was sent to a penal battalion, then he was reinstated to the rank of senior lieutenant of the Red Army, reached Berlin and after the war lived calmly, as a WWII veteran, worked in the paramilitary guards in Rostov-on-Don.

After the war, Alexander Veykh worked in the Kemerovo region in the timber industry as a sawmill operator. A neat and disciplined worker was even elected to the local committee. But one thing surprised his colleagues and fellow villagers - for eighteen years he had never left the village. Valerian Surguladze was arrested right on his own wedding day. A graduate of a sabotage school, a fighter of Sonderkommando 10-a and SD platoon commander, Surguladze was responsible for the deaths of many Soviet citizens.

Nikolai Psarev entered the service of the Germans in Taganrog - on his own, voluntarily. At first he was an orderly for a German officer, then he ended up in the Sonderkommando. In love with the German army, he did not even want to repent of the crimes he had committed when he, working as a foreman for a construction trust in Chimkent, was arrested twenty years after that terrible war. Emelyan Buglak was arrested in Krasnodar, where he settled after many years wandering around the country, believing that there was nothing to be afraid of. Uruzbek Dzampaev, who sold hazelnuts, was the most restless among all the detained policemen and, as it seemed to investigators, he even reacted with some relief to his own arrest. On October 24, 1963, all defendants in the Sonderkommando 10-a case were sentenced to death. Eighteen years after the war, the deserved punishment finally found the executioners, who personally killed thousands of Soviet citizens.

The Krasnodar trial of 1963 was far from the only example of the condemnation of Hitler’s executioners, even many years after the victory in the Great Patriotic War. In 1976, in Bryansk, one of the local residents accidentally identified a man passing by as the former head of the Lokot prison, Nikolai Ivanin. The policeman was arrested, and he, in turn, reported interesting information about a woman who has been hunted by security officers since the war - about Antonina Makarova, better known as “Tonka the Machine Gunner.”

A former nurse of the Red Army, “Tonka the Machine Gunner” was captured, then escaped, wandered through the villages, and then finally went to serve the Germans. She is responsible for at least 1,500 lives of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians. When the Red Army captured Konigsberg in 1945, Antonina posed as a Soviet nurse, got a job in a field hospital, where she met soldier Viktor Ginzburg and soon married him, changing her last name. After the war, the Ginzburgs settled in the Belarusian city of Lepel, where Antonina got a job at a garment factory as a product quality controller.

Real name Antonina Ginzburg - Makarova became known only in 1976, when her brother, who lived in Tyumen, filled out a form to travel abroad and indicated his sister's last name - Ginzburg, nee Makarova. The state security agencies of the USSR became interested in this fact. The surveillance of Antonina Ginzburg continued for more than a year. It was only in September 1978 that she was arrested. On November 20, 1978, Antonina Makarova was sentenced by the court to capital punishment and was shot on August 11, 1979. The death sentence against Antonina Makarova was one of three death sentences against women handed down in the Soviet Union in the post-Stalin era.

Years and decades passed, and security agencies continued to identify the executioners responsible for the deaths of Soviet citizens. The work of identifying Nazi henchmen required maximum care: after all, an innocent person could fall under the “flywheel” of the state punitive machine. Therefore, to exclude everything possible errors, each potential suspect was watched for a very long time before a decision was made to detain.

The KGB kept Antonin Makarov under investigation for more than a year. First, they set up a meeting for her with a disguised KGB officer, who started talking about the war, about where Antonina served. But the woman did not remember the names of the military units and the names of the commanders. Then, one of the witnesses to her crimes was brought to the factory where “Tonka the Machine Gunner” worked, and she, watching from the window, was able to identify Makarova. But even this identification was not enough for the investigators. Then they brought two more witnesses. Makarova was summoned to the security office, allegedly to recalculate her pension. One of the witnesses sat in front of the social security office and identified the criminal, the second, playing the role of a social security worker, also unequivocally stated that in front of her was “Tonka the Machine Gunner” herself.

In the mid-1970s. The first trials of the policemen guilty of the destruction of Khatyn took place. Judge of the Military Tribunal of the Belarusian Military District Viktor Glazkov learned the name of the main participant in the atrocities - Grigory Vasyura. A man with that last name lived in Kyiv and worked as deputy director of a state farm. Vasyura was placed under surveillance. A respectable Soviet citizen posed as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. However, investigators found witnesses to Vasyura’s crimes. The former Nazi punisher was arrested. No matter how he denied it, they managed to prove the guilt of 72-year-old Vasyura. At the end of 1986 he was sentenced to death penalty and was soon shot - forty-one years after the Great Patriotic War.

Back in 1974, almost thirty years after Great Victory, a group of tourists from the United States of America arrived in Crimea. Among them was American citizen Fedor Fedorenko (pictured). Security authorities became interested in his personality. It was possible to find out that during the war, Fedorenko served as a guard in the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. But there were many guards in the camp, and not all of them took personal part in the murders and torture of Soviet citizens. Therefore, Fedorenko’s personality began to be studied in more detail. It turned out that he not only guarded prisoners, but also killed and tortured Soviet people. Fedorenko was arrested and extradited to the Soviet Union. In 1987, Fyodor Fedorenko was shot, although at that time he was already 80 years old.

Now the last veterans of the Great Patriotic War, already very elderly people, are passing away - and those who, in their childhood, had the terrible ordeal of being victims of Nazi war crimes. Of course, the policemen themselves are very old - the youngest of them are the same age as the youngest veterans. But even such a respectable age should not be a guarantee against prosecution.