Tin Hill massacres

According to the testimonies of local residents, during the Nazi occupation, prisoners of war, partisans, and civilians were brought to Tin Hill and Black for destruction from Novgorod, Oredezh, Bateck, Luga, Gatchinsky districts, i.e., from the territories of modern Leningrad, Novgorod and Pskov regions. This made it possible to call Tin Can Hill Novgorod Auschwitz ^[2] . Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor of the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Boris Kovalev confirms that in 1942 a kind of camp was organized near the Tin Can, where the people brought in did not live more than 2-3 days and were subject to destruction ^[3] .

On January 28, 1944, the Red Army liberated the Batetsky district ^[4] , after which terrible facts revealed: during the occupation, its population was almost exterminated. Of the 29 thousand people who lived there before the war, only 5 thousand waited for the arrival of the Red Army. More than 21 thousand were stolen to work in Germany, several thousand were executed ^[5] .

During the years of occupation, 4.4 thousand residential buildings were burned in the district, all industrial enterprises and agricultural buildings, including 16 mills and 36 forges, 45 schools were destroyed.

After the liberation of the village, the work of the Extraordinary State Commission to investigate the war crimes of the invaders was organized. She found in the 6 places of mass executions indicated by witnesses the remains of people with traces of violent death and grievous bodily harm in the amount of three thousand seven hundred people ^[6] (2,600 people in the Tin can, and 1,100 people in the Black).

According to the conclusion on the exhumation of bodies of November 15-16, 1947, “the death of citizens was violent and resulted from serious fatal injuries — through gunshot bullet wounds to the head, neck, chest, head injuries with blunt heavy objects and sharply cutting and cutting weapons, as well as a fracture of the costal arches, often multiple, caused by some kind of blunt objects ... Damages found, and in particular, bullet ones, as a military injury should be excluded. The location of the entrance bullet holes in the vast majority of cases on the occipital part of the head indicates special shots - executions ... On a large number of corpses, damage to bones with even edges found indicates that they were caused by some chopping objects - a cleaver, a saber, a bayonet of a rifle, etc. The corpses of men aged 14 to 55 years and the corpses of women from 18 to 60-65 years were discovered ” ^[5] .

In December 1947, a trial was held in Novgorod on the facts of mass extermination of Soviet citizens, before which appeared the head of the occupation zone of the Novgorod region, the commander of the 6th Wehrmacht Infantry Division, General Kurt Herzog ^[7] and 18 of his subordinates. They were accused of the death of 34 thousand people in the Novgorod region ^[8] .

The duke was the only one of the defendants who pleaded not even guilty, however, on the basis of material evidence, testimonies of the victims and witnesses, as well as the subordinates of the general, he was found guilty of organizing crimes during the occupation of Novgorod, including executions of civilians near the villages of Zhestyanaya Gorka and Chernoye .

According to Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR No. 39 of April 19, 1943 "On punishment measures for Nazi villains guilty of murders and tortures of the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices" the death penalty was based on hanging, but on May 26, 1947, a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the Abolition of the Death Penalty” was issued, after which the death penalty was commuted to 25 years in prison. The duke did not serve this term; he died in a camp near Vorkuta on May 8, 1948 ^[5] . The remaining convicts were amnestied in 1954 ^[7] .

The mass executions of 2 German officers were assigned to punishers ^[9] - both the Russians, who sided with Nazi Germany ^[10] , and the Latvian police battalions ^{[11] [12] [6]} . The composition of the sonderkommando of killers, which included 25-30 people, during the study of German documents was identified by name. It contains 20 names of natives or residents of the Latvian SSR ^[13] : Latvians Rudolf Grote, Karl Latsis, Arthur Krivins, Haris Liepins, Janis Cirulis, Alfons Udrovskis, Erich Buchrot, Bruno Zagers (Zagers), Adolf Clibus, Nikolai Krumin, Egon Bed Russians Andrei and Oleg Klimov, George and Alexander Yakovlev, Porfiry Belyaev (could hide under the name of his mother like Paul Sturis), Evgeni Ragel-Metzvald, Sergei Korti, Andrei Stolyarov, Nikolai Polozov ^{[1] [5] [14]} . The list was compiled in 1967 and it does not indicate whether the perpetrators were punished, many of whom found refuge abroad.

Punishers ^[5]

Officers

The Central Office for the Investigation of the Crimes of National Socialism in Ludwigsburg (Germany), on the recommendation of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, established the identities of the leaders of the punitive action ^[15] .

Karl Abram was born in Innsbruck, during the war he led the division of the Einsatzgruppen A SD in Novgorod, stationed in the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka. After that, he worked as a guard in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz).

Herbert Burgdorf was born April 17, 1919 in Westphalia, is considered one of the highest officers of Einsatzgruppe A in Novgorod. His name is mentioned in official correspondence signed by "Commander Abram" from the village of Zhestyaya Gorka dated April 28, 1942. Burgdorf was killed on May 10, 1945.

Cirulis, Janis (11/16/1910 - 11/18/1979) was born in Valka. He graduated from Tsimze Grammar School and chose an officer career, having received the rank of senior lieutenant at an officer school in 1936 ^[16] . He met Latvia’s accession to the USSR as an assistant military attaché in Estonia, where he served since he knew Estonian ^[17] . He continued his service in the 24th territorial rifle corps of the Red Army. In the early days of World War II, he deserted, after which he joined the "self-defense units", on the basis of which the formation of Latvian police battalions then began. Participated in punitive operations in the Novgorod region. According to eyewitnesses, he cracked down on the victims, stabbing them with a knife ^[18] . After that he was transferred to the Latvian SS Legion , becoming a battalion commander there. After the surrender of Germany, he fell into the Allied occupation zone and served as deputy commander of the Latvian working company under the American army. After that, he settled in Germany, became one of the founders and activist of the organization of Latvian SS veterans "Daugava Hawks ( Daugavas vanaga) ". Since 1954 he was a member of the board of the West German organization "Hawks". From 1967 to 1973 he headed the West German organization and was a member of the central committee of the Hawks. For his services to the organization, already in 1960 he was awarded its main distinction - the golden cross ^[17] . After retiring, he moved to Herford, closer to his daughter Maruta Lesin, continuing to be a member of the Hawks in Munster (1973-1978). On behalf of the Vanagas, he patronized the Latvian Gymnasium , where Egil Levits and Krishjanis Karinsh, prominent modern politicians, subsequently studied. ^[1]

Ordinary performers

Udrovskis, Alfons Janovich (born in 1918, Aluksnensky district), was also a military man and moved from the Latvian army to Red. In the early days of the war, he deserted, then voluntarily entered a punitive unit. I was proudly telling my relatives on a visit that he was “putting things in order in Russia”. He made a tattoo on the arm of the SS sign, which he tried to withdraw at the end of the war, after which a scar remained on his arm. After the war, he was interned by the British, enlisted to work in Canada, where he received citizenship. He worked in the technical control department of General Motors in Toronto. The Soviet Union asked the Canadian authorities to extradite a war criminal, but they refused, as in many similar cases ^[19] .

Grote, Rudolf Janovich (born in 1903), a native of Riga, until 1940 he worked as head. warehouse ^[1] , lived on the street. Kungu, 14, apt. 7 ^[13] .

Belyaev, Porfiry (Paul) Porfirievich (born in 1917), from a family of white emigrants . Could hide in Brazil or the USA under a surname of mother as Paul Sturis.

Klimov, Oleg Georgievich (born in 1918), a native of Petrograd , from the family of a white naval officer. He lived in Canada, corresponded with relatives through the brother of his wife Margarita, who lived in the United States, Minneapolis.

Korti Sergey Alexandrovich (born in 1906), a native of Riga, was hiding in Australia.

At the P47 highway near the village, where there are also military graves of the Red Army soldiers who died during the Great Patriotic War, on June 22, 2010, a memorial sign was opened ^[20] .

In 2017, a creative team led by Honored Artist of Russia Daniil Donchenko, with the organizational assistance of the Novgorod Museum-Reserve, prepared a stage reconstruction of the trial of Nazi criminals in Novgorod in 1947. The idea was awarded a grant by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the field of culture and art as a project of national importance. The project consultant was Dmitry Astashkin, candidate of historical sciences. The premiere of the documentary performance took place on December 16 and 17, 2017, and then on January 20, 2018, participants in the celebration of the liberation of Novgorod from the Nazi invaders saw it ^[8] .

The Novgorod Museum-Reserve and the Novgorod Regional Television prepared a mobile version of the project, including a demo video version of the stage reconstruction, an exhibition with copies of archive photos and original museum exhibits, which served to prove the crimes of the accused at the 1947 trial.

In May 2019, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened a case of genocide under article 357 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the fact of the discovery of a new mass grave of civilians in the vicinity of the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka, opened by the Dolina expedition of the Search Movement of Russia during the international project “Without Statute of Limitations” ^[5] . The search squad found the remains of 42 people, including three children and a pregnant woman. A forensic medical examination established that those buried were killed in 1942–43 ^[2] .

A full-scale study of the burial sites of victims of Nazi punishers continued with a memorial event on June 22, 2019. It is attended by the Novgorod regional branch of the Russian Search Movement and the Investigative Committee of Russia, and military personnel from the 90th separate search battalion of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation assist in their work.

By August 2019, the number of victims discovered during excavations increased to 500 ^[1] , traces of torture were found on them - for example, severed body parts.

• Audrinsky tragedy
• Operation Winter Magic
• Khatyn
• Massacre in Rumbul Forest
• Latvian police battalions