World War II Soviet War Crimes:

REVENGE AT NEUSTETTIN

(February, 1945)

On the 16th of February, soldiers of the First White Russian Army occupied the town of Neustettin just inside the German border with Poland. In the town was the 'Wilmsee' camp of the German R.A.D. (Reich Women's Labour Service). In the huts were some 500 uniformed German girls of the RAD. They were taken to the foreign workers barracks at the local iron foundry. All were considered by the Russians to be members of an illegal army. In an office set up by the Russian commissar groups of girls were brought in and ordered to undress. Two men (believed to be Poles) then entered and grabbing one of the girls bent her backwards over the edge of a table and then proceeded to cut off her vitals before the eyes of the others. Her screams were accompanied by cheers and howls of approval from the Russians. The same fate awaited all the others each procedure becoming ever more cruel. More girls were brought in continually and out in the courtyard hundreds were clubbed to death, only the prettiest being led to the commissars office for torture and death. A few days later when a German tank unit from Cottbus temporarily recaptured the town they were utterly devastated by what they saw. Survivors told of what they had seen. Mothers had to witness their ten and twelve year old daughters being raped by up to twenty soldiers, the daughters in turn witnessing their mothers being raped, even their grandmothers. In most houses in the town nearly every room contained naked and dead women with the Swastika symbol crudely carved on their abdomens. No mercy was shown to the women and girls of Neustettin. It is estimated that about 2,000 girls that had been in the RAD and BDM (League of German Girls) camps in and around the town were raped and murdered in the few days of the Soviet occupation.

The former concentration camps of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were taken over by the the Soviets after World War II and became brutal Soviet-run prisons. Tens of thousands of German civilians were arrested during the Soviet occupation. Anyone, young or old, who had any connection with the Hitler regime, or showed signs of unfriendliness to the new communist rulers, were arrested and thrown into these camps without trial. Exposure, starvation and disease soon took their toll. After the collapse of the Communist Government in 1990 investigations were undertaken to trace those many thousands of young men and boys who had simply disappeared. In 1991, excavations at Sachsenhausen uncovered around fifty mass graves 25 feet by 13 feet wide. Digging revealed bodies stacked 15 feet and higher. It was reported by the Brandenburg State that the bodies of 25,500 persons were found at Sachsenhausen. In other mass graves, at Fünfeichen, Lamsdorf and Ketschendorf, the German Government estimates that another 65,000 bodies will eventually be discovered.

KATYN FOREST

(Smolensk, 1939-40)

In 1939, during the Russian invasion of Poland, some 14,500 Polish officers were captured and interned in three P.O.W. camps in the Soviet Union. The next time the world heard of these prisoners was a news broadcast on April 13, 1943, from Radio Berlin. It stated that the German Army had discovered mass graves at Katyn, 18 kilometres north-west of Smolensk, near the village of Gneizdovo and containing the bodies of Polish officers. Eight graves were opened and 4,253 bodies exhumed. All were dressed in Polish uniforms, with badges of rank and medals intact. No watches or rings were found on the corpses. It was established that the bodies were of Polish officers from the camp at Kozielsk, situated in the grounds of a former Monastery, near Orel. Two other camps, at Starobielsk (3,910 men) and at Ostashkov (6,500 men) were wound up and closed in the first days of April, 1940. Whatever happened to these 10,000 odd officers has never been established. They were never seen alive again. From evidence obtained after the war, all prisoners of Kozielsk camp were shot by Stalin's NKVD.

On April 13, 1990, fifty years after the massacre, the USSR for the first time admitted its responsibility for the murders. The whole controversy was finally laid to rest when Boris Yeltsin, handed over the secret files on Katyn to the Polish president, Lech Walesa, on October 14, 1992. In May 1992, in a wood near Kharkov, a Russian private investigation team discovered a mass grave containing 3,891 bodies of Polish officers from the camp at Starobielsk in the Ukraine. In June of that year, Soviet authorities discovered 30 mass graves at Miednoje, one hundred miles north-west of Moscow. They contained the remains of 6,287 Polish prisoners from the Ostashkov island camp on Lake Seliguer. Before the massacre, 245 officers from Kozielsk, 79 from Starobielsk and 124 from the camp at Ostashkor , were transferred, for no apparent reason, to a camp at Pavlishchev Bor, a hundred miles north-west of the Kozielsk camp. These 448 officers proved to be the only survivors of the Katyn massacre. In other parts of the Katyn Forest, other graves were discovered containing the bodies of Russian political prisoners who were executed in pre-war days by the NKVD. It seems that the Katyn Forest was the main execution site for Stalin's secret police. (Not to be confused with the Khatyn murder site near Minsk.)

MURDER AT BRONIKI, UKRAINE

On July 1st 1941, around 180 German soldiers of the 2nd and 6th Infantry Regiments and the 5th Artillery Regiment were taken prisoner by the Red Army in the town of Broniki. Most were suffering from battle wounds. Next day, the 2nd of July, advancing Wehrmacht troops discovered 153 bodies in a clover field near the town. All had been brutally murdered. According to the twelve survivors of the massacre, they were taken to the field just off the main road and forced to undress. All valuables such as money, rings, watches as well as their uniforms, shirts and shoes were stolen. Standing there naked, the prisoners were then fired upon by machine guns and automatic rifles. A few managed to escape by fleeing to the nearby woods. Similar reports from other regiments gave rise to the suspicion that the Soviets, in the early stages of the war, were not taking any prisoners. There was a division order, according to which every Russian soldier who shoots twenty German soldiers, received a three day leave pass to go home. He also was decorated and raised in rank.

THE GRISCHINO MASSACRE

(February 18, 1943)

The area of Grischino lies to the north-west of Stalino (now Donets) an important industrial region in the Ukraine. Occupied by German forces, it was recaptured by a Soviet armored division and again recaptured by the German 7th Armored Division during a counteroffensive in February, 1943. What they found was the bodies of 406 German soldiers, (POWs) 58 were members of the Todt Organization, 89 Italian soldiers, 9 Romanian soldiers, 4 Hungarian soldiers and some civilian workers, Ukrainian volunteers and German nurses. A total of 596 souls had been killed. Most were shot after being dragged from their hiding places in cellars. Many of the bodies were horribly mutilated, ears and noses cut off and genital organs amputated and stuffed into their mouths. Breasts of some of the nurses were cut off, the women being brutally raped. In the cellar of the main train station around 120 Germans were herded into a large storage room and then mowed down with machine guns. It was realized that the Russians had killed every single German they had found there. As with most massacres, there were survivors and in this case, civilian witnesses.

THE PRISON MASSACRES

(June 22-29, 1941)

During the week of 22/29 June, 1941, thousands of Ukrainian and Polish political prisoners were murdered in their cells by the Soviet NKVD (KGB). The Soviets' hurried retreat had tragic consequences for all political prisoners in the jails of Western Ukraine. Soon after the German attack on the Soviet Union, the retreating Soviets had no time to care for their prisoners locked up in prisons in the Ukraine, so they were simply killed. In some cities the whole prison was set on fire and the helpless prisoners burned to death. In Lutsk, 2,800 out of the 4000 inmates in the NKVD prison, were murdered. When the German 49th Army Corps occupied the Polish-Ukrainian city of Lvov, (now Limberg) around 2,400 dead bodies were found by German troops in the NKVD prison. Some were killed by hand-grenades thrown into their cells, most were killed by a shot in the neck. In the cellars of the Brygidky Prison on Palczymska Street, 423 bodies were recovered. Hundreds more were piled up in the courtyard. In the military prison at Samarstinov, which had been set on fire, 460 charred bodies were found, many showing signs of brutal torture. In the cellars, bodies were piled up layer upon layer almost to the ceiling. Owing to the stench of the decomposing corpses, the German commander of Lvov ordered all doors to the cellars bricked up after the bodies were covered with lime. On June 26-27, 1941, some 520 Ukrainians were shot at Sambor, and at Zlochev, another 700, including the entire local intelligentsia, were arrested and shot on July 16, 1941. At Kremenets, between 100 and 150 were killed and when the bodies were recovered some bodies were without skin, having been thrown into boiling water.

Altogether, in the Ukraine, around 10,000 Ukrainian and Polish political prisoners were killed in their prisons. It is a sad fact that many members of the NKVD execution squads in the Ukraine, were Jewish collaborators. (A memorial plaque at the former headquarters of the NKVD/KGB in Simferpol, Ukraine, is engraved with the names of thirty NKVD agents who gave their lives in the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet name for World War II). The amazing thing is that all thirty names are Jewish! About half a million Jews served in the Red Army and approximately 200,000 were killed. A total of 160,000 Jewish soldiers were decorated with Soviet awards, 145 receiving the highest Soviet award, 'Hero of the Soviet Union'. Two Jewish women were also awarded this honor. (Many Soviet soldiers, after capture, joined the Waffen SS. The 30th SS Division was composed of such troops).

THE HORROR OF VINNITSA

Shortly after the occupation of the town of Vinnitsa in July, 1941, the German troops discovered a mass grave in the courtyard of the town's prison. The grave, twenty metres long by six metres wide, contained the bodies of 96 Ukrainian political prisoners. They were killed when it was found impossible to evacuate them prior to the arrival of the German troops. Behind the prison, in another courtyard, a second mass grave was found but the bodies were not exhumed. However, persistent rumors among the civilian population of Vinnitsa resulted in the discovery of more graves at three different locations. In a pear orchard, 2kms outside the town, 38 mass graves were found, in the old cemetery 40 graves were discovered and in the People's Park another 35. Digging began on May 25, 1943 and it was soon established that the victims had died some five years before. The digging was interrupted some time later by adverse weather conditions. It was never resumed because the Red Army re-occupied the area soon after. By the time the Soviets entered the town, a total of 9,439 corpses had already been counted. All had a bullet wound in the neck. Ukrainian witnesses testified that since 1938 until the arrival of the German troops in 1941, trucks kept coming and going day and night bringing dead bodies to the burial ground from the NKVD prisons in the area. Most of the victims were farmers and field workers (Kulaks) who were classed as 'enemies of the people' and who had resisted Stalin's collectivization policies.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE UKRAINE

Known as the 'Unknown Holocaust'. In 1933, the communist leader of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin, in a bid to crush Ukraine's growing spirit of nationalism, ordered millions of independent farmers (Kulaks) into collective farms. Any resistance to the order was dealt with by the OGPU (KGB) who executed all those who disobeyed. All roads leading out of Ukraine were blocked by Red Army troops, nothing came in and nothing went out. The farms were then deprived of all seed stocks, grain and farm animals. In a short while the Ukrainian farmers began dying of hunger, cold and sickness. In an attempt to stay alive they ate their pets, leather boots, belts and bark from the trees. It is recorded that some parents even ate their youngest children. According to KGB archives at least seven million, a quarter of Ukraine's population, starved to death. The OGPU had made quota, shooting 10,000 victims weekly. Ukrainian party member Nikita Khrushchev helped supervise the executions. In other parts of the Soviet Union another six million peasant farmers were disposed of during collectivization. Many of the OGPU officers were Jews and during the Nazi occupation in World War 11, Jews became the target of revenge by Ukrainians, Balts and Poles. Stalin murdered four times more people than Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao or Pinochet combined.

Ukraine was to suffer much more during and after the German invasion. As the Red Army retreated in front of the Nazi hordes, wholesale evacuation of Ukrainian industry, including 197 factories, were ordered by the Soviets. Between November, 1943, and March, 1944, everything was being looted, destroyed and burned again as the German troops retreated in front of the victorious Red Army. Some 150 museums, 62 drama theatres and around 600 movie theatres were destroyed by the Germans. Around 28,000 villages and 714 towns were razed to the ground leaving ten million people without shelter. (Over 700 rare books, looted by the Nazis, were returned to the Ukraine by Germany on April 28, 1995). What the Soviets failed to destroy on their retreat in 1941 the Germans destroyed in their retreat in 1943/44. This scorched earth policy by two opposing armies caused devastation and suffering beyond belief. A total of 460,000 German soldiers were killed in the Ukraine, most by Partisans. Retaliation was to be 200 civilians executed for every soldier killed. In Kiev alone, 700 citizens were put to death in November, 1941. All over the Ukraine the German Wehrmacht was treated as liberators and over 25,000 Ukrainians volunteered to fight on the German side against the Soviets as the 'Galicia Division SS'.

MASSACRES IN VOLHYNIA

(February, 1943)

In the Volhynia (Volyn) area of north western Ukraine, local Ukrainian nationalists formed themselves into a resistance army, the Ukrainian Uprising Army (UPA) to fight the Nazi occupiers. Unfortunately their anger turned against the local Polish minority. (In the area lived some 346,000 Poles) In an attempt to drive all Poles out of Wolhynia and the Ukraine, in anticipation of an independent Ukrainian state after the war, the UPA started a war of ethnic cleansing that was to prove disastrous for both populations. The UPA marched from village to village and killed all civilians of Polish nationality. Some 167 towns and villages were entered in this orgy of slaughter. In the village of Poryck, 157 Polish civilians were shot while attending mass in the local Catholic church. These massacres continued for a year in the rural areas until all Polish residents were either killed or expelled from their homes. These ethnic massacres were completely ignored by the German occupation forces. The exact number of Poles murdered remains unknown but is estimated by a number of historians to be in the region of 35 to 60 thousand. In this ethnic strife period around 20,000 Ukrainians were killed by Poles. In July, 2003, on the 60th anniversary of the massacres, the presidents of the two nations, Poland and Ukraine, called for a move towards reconciliation and mutual forgiveness. Today, there are over 600 mass grave sites in Volhynia containing the bodies of murdered Polish civilians

ATROCITY AT FEODOSIA

(December 29, 1941)

On the shores of the Black Sea, on the Crimean Peninsula, stands the port city of Feodosia. On the 3rd of November the city was captured by the German 46th and 170th Infantry Divisions. As the attack on Sevastopol was about to take place, most of the German forces were withdrawn to concentrate on the forthcoming battle. Left behind in the city were a small detachment of troops and all the wounded soldiers convalescing in the city's hospitals. On the afternoon of December 29, the city was bombarded by the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and a landing was made by Soviet marines followed by infantry. On the 18th of January, 1942, after their failure to capture Sevastopol, the German Wehrmacht was able to return and recapture Feodosia. They found that most of the German military personnel had been murdered. Wounded soldiers had been thrown out of the windows of the hospital to make room for Russian wounded. Water was then poured on the near dead bodies and then left to freeze. On the beach, piles of bodies were found where they were thrown from a wall several metres high after being beaten and mutilated, their bodies left in the surf so that the sea water froze and covered them with a sheet of ice. There were some twelve survivors who had hidden in cellars when the Russian troops arrived. Their testimony before a German court of inquiry confirmed that some 160 wounded soldiers were liquidated this way.

CHARTSYSK MASSACRE

(September 18, 1941)

During the Soviet army retreat in the direction of Yeletsk, the retreating soldiers came upon a small ravine between Chartsysk and Snizhy stations about sixty kilometres from the city of Stalino (Donetsk) The horrible sight that befell their eyes was the dead bodies of many children aged from 14 to 16 years that partly filled the ravine. They were dressed in the black uniform of the F.S.U. Trade and Craft School in Stalino. It was discovered that the children were being evacuated from the school as the German army neared the city. After walking nearly 60 kilometres they became utterly exhausted and had begged for transport. Their guardians promised to send trucks but instead a detachment of Russian political police (NKVD) arrived. Carrying machine-guns, they starting shooting the children in cold blood and throwing the bodies into the ravine. The Soviet soldiers counted the bodies of 370 slain children.

THE KORSUN SLAUGHTER, Ukraine, USSR

(February 16-17, 1944)

During the freezing cold night of February 16, five divisions of General Hube's 1st SS Panzer Army, (54,000 men) including the 5th SS Division Viking and the Belgian Volunteer Brigade Wallonie, made a last desperate bid to break out of the Russian encirclement around the towns of Korsun and Shandrerovka in the lower Dnieper south-west of Kiev. At 4am, elements of the 8th Army formed up into two marching columns of around 14,000 men each and flocked into two parallel ravines in the surrounding countryside, and where the two ravines met, the troops, now in complete disorder, then emerged into open country and headed out towards the town of Lysyanka. There, disaster struck as troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, under General Konev, were waiting. Soon after 6am, the slaughter began. Soviet tanks drove into the two German columns crushing hundreds under their tracks. Fleeing in panic, the troops were then bombed and shelled before being confronted by units of Cossack cavalry who started hacking them to pieces with their sabres, There was no time to take prisoners and in the short space of three hours around 20,000 German soldiers lay dead, their bodies later dumped in holes dug in the ground. The hundreds of wounded and medical personnel left behind were butchered by the Cossacks. Only a few officers survived, most had fled the scene by plane some days before. (Russian sources put the number of dead during the two weeks of fighting at over 70,000) To reach Lysyanka the troops had first to cross the raging Gniloy-Tikich river. Reaching the opposite side many were transformed into blocks of ice their uniforms frozen to their bodies. About eight thousand others, who had fled the scene and were hiding in the woods, were rounded up during the next few days and taken prisoner. For this great victory, General Konev was awarded the title 'Marshal of the Soviet Union'.

"...Millions of women victims raped by Russian soldiers during the last months of World War II. Anthony Beevor's book "Berlin -- The Downfall 1945" documents rape by Russian soldiers. "Beevor's conclusions are that in response to the vast scale of casualties inflicted on them by the Germans the Soviets responded in kind, and that included rape on a vast scale. It started as soon as the Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia in 1944, and in many towns and villages every female aged from 10 to 80 was raped." The author "was 'shaken to the core' to discover that even their own Russian and Polish women and girls liberated from German concentration camps were also violated." He estimates that "a 'high proportion' of at least 15 million women who lived in the Soviet zone or were expelled from Germany's eastern provinces were raped." Until recent years, East German women from the World War II era referred to the Red Army war memorial in Berlin as "the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist."

Crime and punishment:

Everybody has reason unless someone is insane.
Lets figure out what "crime" is. It is not what law states or someone decides - it is only what you personally think.
I will give you example. 50 years ago it was unlawful in Alabama for black person to sit in place with sign "only for whites". That was a crime according to the law of Alabama. Was it a crime according to your personal opinion? So, the crime is only what you personally define as a crime - something totally unacceptable TO YOU.
The crime demands a punishment (otherwise it becomes acceptable - not a crime anymore).
If crime defines by the law - than another law establishes punishment for it. If there is no law to define the crime - than those who personally consider it a crime establish punishment. For justice to take place the punishment must be proportional to the crime, does not matter who consider it to be a crime - law or group of people.
So, the real issue is not what represents the crime (because each crime leads to punishment), the real issue what you personally consider a crime.
In nazi Germany crime was for example was to be a Jew and everybody who committed this crime (being a Jew) was punished. To punish for committing crime is normal, to define as a "crime" to be born in a certain religious group is abnormal. For Bin Laden is a crime to reject teaching of Koran as an ultimate truth, above everything else. Again, that he wants to punish people for such "crime" is normal, that he consider it as a crime - is abnormal.
Do you consider nazi attack on Russia and their conduct on Russian soil as a crimes? If you do - then obviously punishment for such crimes should be acceptable to you.
You might disagree that Russians punished not ONLY direct perpetrators of that crime but bystanders also.
It should not be too difficult for you to swallow - you do it all the time.
Take for example apartheid in South Africa. Many Europeans countries and a lot of different organizations declared boycott. That was collective punishment of entire white population of South Africa in disregard - children, women, supports someone policy of apartheid or opposes it. Everybody was punished. And you most likely considered this "collective punishment" morally correct and just.
You may also object to cruelty of punishment by Red Army in comparison to boycott. You cannot compare crimes committed against black population by whites in South Africa with the crimes committed by Germans against Russians. That is why punishments are not comparable also.

List of war crimes:

This article lists and summarizes War Crimes committed since the Hague Conventions of 1907. In addition, those incidents which have been judged in a court of law to be Crimes Against Peace and Crimes against Humanity that have been committed since these crimes were first defined (in the London Charter, August 8, 1945) are also included.^[1]

Crimes against Humanity:

When most people think of crimes against humanity, they are thinking of genocide, and genocide is a crime. It is also sometimes an eruption of violence which takes place during "intractable" or unsolvable conflicts. An interesting sociological or criminological feature of genocide is the widespread sense of complicity, no matter how implicit, and a sense that somehow "society" has failed. When studying genocide, then, it is probably best to remember the audience or bystander role. Smith (2005), in fact, goes further and argues there are four roles to consider -- victim, perpetrator, bystander, and hero. How broad a perspective must be brought to bear on the problem is a matter of debate, however, as the field of genocide studies is mostly locked in a state of self-definition (like a lot of other academic fields of importance to humanity).

Communism and Crimes against Humanity in the Baltic states:

"And what is far more important, the work of this commission reflects our common convisiton that we cannot build a free and democratic future without facing up to the past. Trying to sweep past events under the rug of collective forgetfulness will not help us to achieve either reconciliation or progress toward a better future. Doing so will not prevent such horrors from being repeated. Instead, ignoring what happened in the name of whatever short-term goals will guarantee that we will be living in a house built on sand, one certain to collapse during the next storm."