MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/. During the occupation of the Dzerzhinsky district of Stalingrad from mid-September to November 1942, Nazi Germany’s army forced 15,000 local residents into slavery, as follows from a report from the extraordinary state commission for the investigation of atrocities committed by the Nazi invaders and their accomplices.
The evidence is contained in the FSB’s declassified archive, presented by the presidential National Center for Historical Memory at a TASS press conference.
"During the occupation of the Dzerzhinsky district of the city of Stalingrad by German troops from September 15 to November 1942, the Hitlerites forcibly, under the threat of starvation or execution, drove peaceful Soviet citizens from the mentioned district into slavery. <...> Thousands of people, including children and the elderly, were driven under escort on foot to the camps of Voroponovo, Kalach, Nizhny Chir and Belaya Kalitva. <...> From September 15 to November 1942, the German invaders drove 15,000 Soviet citizens from the Dzerzhinsky District of Stalingrad into German slavery," reads the report of June 27, 1943, compiled on the basis of a roll-call list of residents forcibly moved to Germany and interviews with witnesses.
The report notes that initially the German command tried to persuade the local civilians to go to Germany by deceit, promising jobs in accordance with training and skills, good food and treatment. However, when the residents did not show up at the meeting place, the Nazi troops began to use force.
"Many children, old people and the sick died on the way, as the Germans forced them to march on foot. Others froze to death on open railroad cars, exposed to snow, rain and chilling wind. In the transit camp in the town of Kalach the forced laborers were kept outdoors round the clock in the snow and rain. Also, they starved. They were fed once a day, their ration being two spoonfuls of burnt wheat and a slice of rotten raw horse meat, and almost no water," the report reads.
According to the inquiry, the prisoners were forced to do hard labor. Those unable to work were kicked and beaten with rubber sticks and rifle butts. Children over 14 years old were also forcibly taken away from their mothers and sent to Germany for hard labor.
"The advancing Red Army liberated from the camps of Kalach, Nizhny Chir and Belaya Kalitva those whom the Nazis had not yet managed to take to Germany - about 2,000 people, who were later able to return to Stalingrad," says the report presented by the National Center for Historical Memory.
On June 21, TASS and the presidential National Center for Historical Memory signed a memorandum of cooperation. It envisages the launch of an information and educational project on key points of historical memory, one of these being the memory of June 22 and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.