MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has made public hitherto archived documentary evidence that reveals instances of massacres of children, women and the elderly by Ukrainian collaborators with the Nazi occupying forces in the Dnepropetrovsk Region during World War II.
According to the FSB’s public relations center, among the documents there is a special message from the chief of the counterintelligence directorate Smersh (Russian abbreviation of Death to Spies) of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, addressed to the Military Council of the 3rd Ukrainian Front and dated February 1944.
In October and November 1943, during the Battle of the Dnieper, the Red Army liberated the cities of Dnepropetrovsk, Dneprodzerzhinsky, and other areas within the Dnepropetrovsk Region. In the village of Tokmakovka, counterintelligence operatives arrested active collaborators of Hitler's Germany, including officials and agents of the Tomakovka district police force and its chief. On February 16, 1944, Major-General Pyotr Ivashutin, the head of the Smersh counterintelligence directorate of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, sent a special message to the front commander, General of the Army Rodion Malinovsky, and the Military Council of the 3rd Ukrainian Front.
"In the Tomakovka district of the Dnepropetrovsk Region, the occupying forces of Nazi Germany, with the direct and active participation of the district police, carried out mass shootings of orphanage pupils, elderly patients at the Tomakovka home for the disabled, and local civilians of Jewish nationality. <...> Police chief Plavshuda personally participated in the mass shooting of 60 elderly citizens from the Tomakovka home for the disabled. He is responsible for the mass shooting of 127 individuals, 108 of whom were pupils of the local orphanage and 19 Jews aged between 2 and 70," the report states.
Most Hitlerite collaborators from the so-called Ukrainian auxiliary police (Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft) fled with the retreating Wehrmacht forces, while some attempted to hide in other regions of Ukraine. In the winter of 1944, a group of Ukrainian policemen from the village of Novoproskurovka was apprehended by counterintelligence operatives of the 8th Army of the 3rd Ukrainian Front. Subsequent investigations revealed numerous barbaric mass shootings of peaceful Soviet citizens committed by Ukrainian policemen.
On February 21, 1944, Pyotr Ivashutin submitted a special report to the Military Council of the 3rd Ukrainian Front detailing the crimes committed by Ukrainian policemen. "On May 31, 1942, the Nazi occupation authorities organized the shooting of 147 Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality who resided in the village of Novo-Proskurovka and nearby Jewish settlements," the report states. It emphasized that "this shooting of Soviet citizens is characterized by investigation materials as an extraordinary act of savage massacre of innocent people, who were subjected to brutal violence and torture before their deaths."
Policeman Andrey Neplyakh, during an interrogation on February 1, 1944, recounted: "At the end of February 1942, I took women, children, and the elderly on a cart to the execution site under the pretense of sending them to the district hospital. <...> I threw them into the pit. Most of them were still alive. I personally threw in three infants. After the execution was complete, we buried the mass grave, including those still breathing."
Special Commission
As the investigation progressed, a special panel of inquiry was established "to exhume the grave and probe into the atrocities committed against those who were shot." It was discovered that Ukrainian police officers had tortured children and buried them alive. "On January 29, 1944, 147 corpses of victims aged from 3 to 70 were found in the exhumed grave. Among these were 11 children's corpses, 47 women's corpses (11 of whom were elderly), and 49 men's corpses (9 of whom were elderly). The age and sex of the others could not be determined. <...> The children's corpses showed signs of brutal torture. Their skulls were cracked with blunt instruments, and their limbs were broken. Many of the bodies were tightly intertwined and crumpled, indicating they had been buried while still alive. Others bore gunshot wounds to the back of the skull," the commission's report dated January 29, 1944, states.
Upon completion of the investigation, all the accused individuals were court-martialed.