MOSCOW, April 11. /TASS/. About 150 Soviet intelligence agents were shot dead in a Nazi camp near the Krasny Bor station in the Smolensk Region during the Soviet Union’s 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany as evidenced by archive materials obtained by TASS.
The materials were declassified by the FSB (Federal Security Service) regional branch and transferred to the State Archive of the Smolensk Region’s Modern History under the "Without Limitation Period" project. The move was timed for the International Day of Fascist Concentration Camps Prisoners Liberation.
The archive comprises records, intelligence data and special reports by the Soviet SMERSH military counter-intelligence dated 1944-1945. It includes a protocol of an interrogation by Felix Niko, an investigator of Unit 1C of the 269th German Infantry Division and a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) who worked in Russian prisoner-of-war camps.
"I interrogated up to 2,000 Soviet prisoners-of-war. Among Red Army soldiers and officers whom I interrogated, I personally exposed up to 150 Soviet intelligence and counter-intelligence agents… [They] were shot dead in Krasny Bor," Niko wrote, noting that these were only the persons he had exposed personally. "I do not know how many people were shot dead under other investigators’ materials," he wrote.
As the German investigator noted, torture and beatings were used during the interrogation of citizens and the arrested persons were transferred to the anti-espionage department, once materials were received that they were Soviet agents. The investigation continued there, following which most intelligence agents were shot dead without a court trial, some were tried and some others were sent to Germany.
Those who were sent to Germany were trained in special spy schools and then moved to the Red Army’s rear for espionage.
In all, as the German investigator recorded, up to 400 Soviet citizens were shot dead in Krasny Bor.