Remlinger personally ordered a series of punitive expeditions, which killed thousands of Soviet citizens. Thus, in the area of ​​the village of Karamyshevo, 239 civilians were shot and 229 were burned alive. In the Utorgosh region, 250 people were shot. On the road Slavkovichi - Ostrov, 150 people were killed. In the village of Pikalikha, Karamyshevsky district, the Nazis herded 180 people (old people, women and children) into houses and then set them on fire; those who tried to escape were shot. On Remlinger's instructions, 25,000 people were driven into German slavery and 145 villages were burned.

Captain K. Strüfing also gave criminal orders for executions; he personally killed about 200 people.

The remaining nine defendants were efficient executors of orders - they shot and burned old people, children, and women alive. Lieutenants, sergeants, privates: E. Boehm, F. Engel, E. Sonenfeld, E. Skotki, G. Janicke, E. Herer, E. Vogel, E. Wiese, A. Duret. Each personally killed from 11 to 350 people and calmly admitted to it.

Here is a typical testimony of a soldier of the second “special purpose” battalion at trial: “Yanicke admits: the order of Major General Remlinger was read to the company in which he was located in the Plyussa area. The order stated that on the Luga-Pskov line, where the partisans were operating, all settlements should be burned, and the civilian population found in them, evading being taken to Germany, should be shot... Carrying out the order, the company burned villages , blew up with grenades all the dugouts in which old people, women and children were hiding - they were destroyed with grenades and mines in the dugouts themselves. Names the settlements where the entire population was exterminated without exception: Plyussu, Bolshie Lyady, Malaya Plyussa, Strugi Krasnye, Zapolye, Potorochennye, Ugly, Nikolaevo.

“How many people were shot in total?”

"One and a half to two thousand."

"How many have you personally destroyed?"

"About three hundred..."

Only Remlinger and Wiese did not admit their guilt. But there was already enough evidence: examinations, confrontations, staff documents, witness testimony.

Therefore, the Military Tribunal sentenced Remlinger, Struefing and their seven henchmen to death by hanging. The lives of three criminals were saved (most likely thanks to the work of lawyers): E. Vogel (20 years in the camps), F. Wiese (also 20 years) and A. Duret (15 years).

The Pravda newspaper wrote: “The workers of Leningrad, Leningrad, Pskov and Novgorod regions present in the hall greeted the verdict with unanimous approval.” Tens of thousands of Leningraders came to the execution of criminals. From the diary of Pravda special correspondent P. Luknitsky: “All the convicts accepted death silently and without any gestures. Silence reigned in the crowd of thousands of Leningraders who filled the square. But now - it's all over. The roar and applause of the crowd of people, the roar of approval, shouts: “Death to the fascist scoundrels!” - and many others, merging into a formidable element of popular anger.”

The crimes in the Leningrad region were so large-scale that in December 1947, 19 more war criminals were convicted at the Novgorod open trial.

Source: Luknitsky P.N. Leningrad is active. Book three. M.: Soviet writer, 1971. Chapter 26.

The first witness to testify is a collective farmer from the village of Rostkovo, Novoselsky district, V.F. Fedorov. He is fifty-three years old and illiterate. He talks about what happened in the village of Rostkovo on December 23, 1943: “I’ll tell you exactly what happened in our village. Let's go to work... We come across a lot of German fryers. We had just started work when we heard shooting. The headman is forced to work, but our hands are withering, nothing is going well... We see Rostkovo is burning, they burned it. We run, six kilometers, we keep running, we keep running, we came home, the whole village was on fire, and we were wearing felt boots, there was water all around. No one was found, not a single person was found. We are looking, everyone is wet... There are only ten of us left... They drove all of us into a barn, burned them alive... We found only corpses, half of which were burned. You touch your head, it all crumbles, your legs, arms fall off, only the carcass... We became scared... We dug up a dugout in the morning, and lived like that for two months and a half, when our heroes came... Well, I would have killed these robbers if If only they gave me power, I would slaughter them all, I can’t watch! They died... (Fedorov lists names and surnames). Granddaughter, four years old, like a single doll, we took care of her... Thirty-three people, only children, died. A total of sixty-four people died..."

“Were there any people shot too?” - asks the court.

“No, they weren’t shot, they were all burned in one barn, only in another building there were three carcasses... Those who burned were: my wife, Maria Nikolaevna, fifty-three years old, my daughter-in-law Inna - thirteen years old... December twenty-third of the year forty-three was "

“Do you know the names of the punishers?”

“I don’t know the soldiers’ names. We can’t recognize them because it was dark... They are worse than animals!.. And there’s nothing more to say!”

Collective farmer Evgenia Efimovna Sergeeva, born in 1927, from the same village of Rostkovo, who survived among the ten who were at work in the forest that morning, says:

“We were at work. I ran home, the village was on fire. There is no one... The Trofimov family - a son, three children and Andreeva's wife - five people; three children, my mother and two nieces were burned. Each family had children, from one year to fifteen years old - children. Everyone was burned. Girl Maria Fedorova. One girl was shot. They were burned in the same barn.”

“Do the defendants have any questions?”

"No!" - answered each of the defendants.

Collective farmer Filippova Natalya Prokofyevna, born in 1901, from the village of Zamushki, Karamyshevsky district, says:

“Under the Germans, we lived in the village of Zamushki. Two days before the arrival of the Red Army, in February one thousand nine hundred and forty-four, we moved into the forest, lived there night and day, and the Red Army came, went to Karamyshevo, and we went home, a group of twenty-four people, returning in threes, four, five people together. When they arrived, they saw that there were no Reds there, but there were Germans there. I was with my eight-year-old daughter. Oh, we think they will drive us to Pskov!.. We look: murdered old women and children are lying in the runway - trampled underfoot!.. Those who were with me all began to cry!..

The Germans removed us from the run and drove us to the edge of the village, to the vegetable garden. There is a dugout, there are Germans in it... “Stay here,” they say, “now the authorities will come in, we’ll decide!..”

And there was a hut, I went into the hut, lay down, and my daughter stayed with everyone...

Five soldiers with machine guns came out and shot everyone. Only my daughter fell face down and was covered with straw, and the Germans left... And in the evening my daughter came, and another girl was wounded in the chest. I took the wounded girl, and then she was sent to Leningrad... My daughter was eight years old, I: “Why didn’t you come to me before?” - “I was afraid that if I had moved, they would have killed me, so I lay with everyone else in the straw” - with those shot, that means... Twenty-four of our people were killed... The children who... Modest Zakharov’s face was stabbed with knives, his head was flattened , the girl Nina, Misha Petukhov, a one-year-old child, were trampled underfoot...”

Vasily Ivanovich Pakulin, born in 1910, lived in Zapolye, Plyussky district, was the caretaker of the Zapolye school for peasant youth during the occupation.

“How did the Germans behave?” - the court asks the witness.

“On February 18, 1944, when we were evacuated, they stopped everyone near the church and started shooting. Thirty-five people were shot and sixteen were seriously wounded: Olga Gusarova, Makar Sergeev, sixty-five years old (lists names), and including my wife...

There were twelve children... They believed that we were helping the wounded... They took away cattle and horses from us, in Podgorye, in Zamoshye, in Milyutin (lists robbed villages). In Milyutin he burned one hundred and thirty houses, in Zapolye - thirty... In total, from the villages of Skoritsy, Podgorye, Zaplusye, Zamoshye, Milutino and Staroversky Meadow, he stole more than four hundred cows and thirty-five horses... And in the village of Sedlitsy, fifty people were thrown with grenades, - families lived in dugouts, they were all killed..."

“How did you yourself remain unharmed?”

“When the first salvo was fired, I lay down, and all the people were already falling through me, I was lying under the dead. And then I ran - into the forest, and hid there until five o’clock in the morning... My wife, wounded only in the leg, also lay under the corpses, the child remained unharmed with her...”

“Here is the last one sitting!” - Pakulin points his hand at Sonnenfeld.

Chairman:

“Defendant Zonenfeld, have you been to the village of Zapolye?”

"Yes!" - Zonenfeld admits, standing up.

“Did they burn this village?!”

“Did you participate in the execution of civilians?”

“Yes,” Sonnenfeld replies, visibly pale.

Military tribunal in besieged Leningrad. Executions for speculation, participation in grain theft, cannibalism, banditry. The end of the failed governor of Leningrad. Executions in territories occupied by fascist troops. The last public execution in the city: “The fulcrum has disappeared from under the feet of the condemned.”

Before approaching the events of the Great Patriotic War, let's provide a few more lines of statistics. Special services historian Vasily Berezhkov, already known to the reader, provides the following data on those executed in Leningrad up to 1945:

1939 - 72 executed,

The statistics here are eloquent. The pre-war executions, as is easy to understand, were the executions of some of Yezhov’s executioners, reprisals against enemies of the people who had not yet been killed, and a tribute to the spy mania of those years. I will cite only two names: Leningraders Konstantin Petrovich Vitko and Alexey Nikolaevich Vasiliev, both were sentenced to death for espionage and treason, the sentence was carried out on July 3 and September 23, 1939, respectively.

The war that began in 1941 could not but lead to a sharp tightening of the repressive mechanism. This is understandable: everyday life in war is always difficult, and for Leningraders they turned out to be especially difficult, because in addition to the great loss of life, hunger, cold and bombing, rampant crime was added. Food speculation, for example: in conditions of unbearable shortages, it was inevitable, and they fought against it, including by executions. One of the cases is described in a secret special message from the head of the Leningrad NKVD department, Pyotr Nikolaevich Kubatkin, dated November 7, 1941: a criminal group was formed in the system of trust canteens and restaurants in Leningrad, whose members “systematically stole large quantities of food from the warehouses and bases where they worked,” and then sold what they extracted at speculative prices. During the arrest of the leader of the group, the warehouse manager of the Caucasus restaurant, Burkalov, “the following items stolen by him were discovered: flour 250 kg, cereal 153 kg, sugar 130 kg. and other products."

Burkalov and one of his accomplices were sentenced to death. Those killed during the siege were buried in different places, including on the Levashovskaya wasteland.

Capital punishment was imposed during the blockade and “for inciting protests and participating in the theft of grain”: in January 1942 alone, seven were shot on such charges. It was not only about bandit attacks on stores, but also spontaneous riots that broke out in queues. There is a well-known incident in store No. 12 of the Leninsky District Food Store in January 1942: “About 20 citizens rushed behind the counter and began throwing bread from the shelves into the crowd,” as a result, according to NKVD estimates, about 160 kg of bread were stolen.

Food shortages led to executions even on the Road of Life: despite strict controls, some drivers managed to steal flour by pouring it out of sacks. Commissioner of the OATB echelons of the 102nd military highway N.V. Zinoviev later recalled: “If theft is discovered, then a military tribunal goes to the scene, the death penalty is imposed, and the sentence is immediately carried out. I happened to witness the execution of driver Kudryashov. The battalion lined up in a square. A closed car with a condemned man pulled up. He came out wearing felt boots, cotton pants, one shirt and no hat. Hands back, tied with a strap. About 10 shooters line up right there. The chairman of the tribunal reads the verdict. Then an order is given to the commandant, who commands the condemned: “Circle! On knees!" - and to the shooters: “Fire!” A salvo of 10 shots is heard, after which Kudryashov shudders, continues to kneel for some time, and then falls face down into the snow. The commandant comes up and shoots him in the back of the head with a revolver, after which the corpse is loaded into the back of a car and taken away somewhere.”

Among the siege crimes caused by hunger is the worst - cannibalism. In Kubatkin’s special message dated June 2, 1942, one can find summary statistics of cannibalism cases: 1,965 people were arrested, investigations into 1,913 of them were completed, 586 were sentenced to capital punishment, and 668 were sentenced to prison. The then military prosecutor of Leningrad, Anton Ivanovich Panfilenko, informed the leadership and about other details: according to his data, natives of Leningrad made up less than 15% of the cannibals, the rest were newcomers; Only 2% of those prosecuted had a previous criminal record.

One of these cases was reflected in the blockade diary of Lyubov Vasilyevna Shaporina, entry dated February 10, 1942: “A certain Karamysheva lived in apartment 98 of our building with her daughter Valya, 12 years old, and her teenage son, an artisan. The neighbor says: “I was sick, my sister had a day off, and I persuaded her to stay with me. Suddenly I hear the Karamyshevs screaming. Well, I say, Valka is being whipped. No, they shout: “Save, save.” The sister rushed to the Karamyshevs’ door, knocked, but they didn’t open it, but the cry of “save me” grew louder. Then other neighbors ran out, everyone knocked on the door, demanding to open it. The door opened, a girl covered in blood ran out of it, followed by Karamysheva, her hands also covered in blood, and Valka was playing the guitar and singing at the top of her lungs. He says: an ax fell from the stove onto a girl. The management director told the information that became clear during the interrogation. Karamysheva met a girl at the church who was asking for alms. She invited her to her place, promised to feed her and give her ten. At home they assigned roles. Valya sang to drown out the screams, the son covered the girl’s mouth. At first Karamysheva thought of stunning the girl with a log, then hit her on the head with an ax. But the girl was saved by a thick down hat. They wanted to kill and eat. Karamysheva and her son were shot. My daughter was placed in a special school.”

Another case is in Kubatkin’s message dated May 2, 1942, which talks about a female gang captured at the Razliv station: “The gang members visited bread and grocery stores, targeted the victim and lured her to G.’s apartment, allegedly to exchange things for food .

During a conversation in G.’s apartment, gang member V. committed murder with an ax blow to the back of the head. The corpses of the murdered gang members were dismembered and eaten. Clothes, money and food cards were shared among themselves.

During January-March, gang members killed 13 people. In addition, 2 corpses were stolen from the cemetery and used for food.”

All six members of the gang were sentenced to death by a military tribunal. During the blockade, such a fate awaited all those cannibals who killed and then consumed the meat of their victims as food: their crimes were classified as banditry. Those who consumed the meat of corpses were, for the most part, sentenced to prison, although capital punishment sometimes awaited them (as, for example, the milling machine operator of the Bolshevik plant K., who in December 1941 cut off the legs “from unburied corpses at the Serafimovskoye cemetery for the purpose of consumption"). Let us also pay attention to the difference between the total number of people in Kubatkin’s statistics and the number of those convicted: the rest, apparently, did not live to see the verdict.

Unfortunately, cases of cannibalism continued in the blockaded city even after Kubatkin compiled his terrifying statistics. There were also new executions. Unemployed K, 59 years old, was executed because on July 1, 1942, “having lured a five-year-old boy I. to her apartment, killed him and consumed the corpse as food.” Around the same time, assistant driver of the Finnish Line of the Oktyabrskaya Railway A., 36 years old, killed his neighbor, an employee of the technical school of the City Cleaning Trust, dismembered the body “and prepared parts of it for consumption.” He was detained on the street by a policeman with a bag containing the severed head of a neighbor. According to the verdict of the military tribunal, he was shot.

The famine in besieged Leningrad also contributed to ordinary banditry: “Individual criminal elements, in order to take possession of ration cards and food products, committed bandit murders of citizens.” This also posed a problem for the city. And it is no coincidence that on November 25, 1942, the military council of the Leningrad Front, headed by Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov, adopted resolution No. 001359 “On measures to combat banditry in Leningrad,” which stated harshly and succinctly: “Cases of banditry are to be considered within 24 hours, bandits are to be sentenced to death and publish several verdicts in the press.”

They were also sentenced to death for less serious crimes. Evidence of this is not difficult to find in the besieged issues of the Leningradskaya Pravda newspaper. At the beginning of November 1941, for example, citizen I. Ronis, the head of a gang that systematically stole food and manufactured goods cards from citizens, was sentenced to capital punishment by a military tribunal. In April 1942, citizen A.F. was shot. Bakanov, who, “entering the apartment of citizen S., stole her things,” and also with an accomplice “robbed two citizens, using their bread cards.” Reports about such trials and executed sentences were published regularly in the first months of the blockade under the constant heading “In the military tribunal.” Although the executions themselves were not public, the edifying element in these executions was still the most important.

All these crimes are purely criminal, but there were also instances of political crimes during the blockade. Siege historian Nikita Lomagin writes that “on average, during the war months of 1941, 10–15 people were shot per day in the city for anti-Soviet activities,” but notes that “the number of people convicted of robbery, banditry and murder was three times higher , rather than “political”..."

What political crimes are we talking about? A report on the activities of the Leningrad police, compiled in the fall of 1943, states directly: “In the first period of the war, there were manifestations of anti-Soviet pro-fascist agitation, the dissemination of false rumors, leaflets, etc.<…>Decisive, severe measures were taken against the defendants in these cases, which yielded positive results in terms of reducing this type of crime.”

And again, Leningradskaya Pravda gives us examples. On July 3, 1941, for example, she notified readers that the military tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Leningrad District had examined the case against V.I. Koltsov for distributing anti-Soviet leaflets “fabricated by the Finnish White Guard” among visitors to cafe-buffets, and sentenced him to death. On September 30, 1941, the newspaper reported about “the case of Smetanin Yu.K., Sergeeva E.V., and Surin V.M. on charges of counter-revolutionary agitation”: the accused not only spread “false rumors aimed at weakening the power of the Red Army,” but also kept fascist leaflets they had collected. The ending is clear: “Fascist agents Smetanin, Sergeeva and Surin were sentenced to capital punishment - execution. The sentence has been carried out."

The severity of blockade justice was sometimes aggravated by the excessive zeal of the NKVD. The case of a group of Leningrad scientists convicted of anti-Soviet sentiments and the creation of a counter-revolutionary organization called the “Committee of Public Salvation” affected dozens of people, and five were shot by a military tribunal in the summer of 1942: the outstanding optical scientist, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Sergeevich Ignatovsky, his wife, professors Nikolai Artamonovich Artemyev and S.M. Chanyshev, senior engineer of the Institute of Precision Mechanics Konstantin Alekseevich Lyubov. After the war, in 1957, the special inspection of the KGB personnel department was forced to state: “No objective data about the existence of a counter-revolutionary organization among scientists, except for the testimony of the arrested themselves, obtained as a result of physical and moral pressure on them, was obtained during the investigation.” . And a year later, the Party Control Committee admitted something else: in the Leningrad NKVD department, “the criminal practice of interrogating prisoners after they were sentenced to heavy duty was widespread. During these interrogations, by means of promises to save the lives of those sentenced to death, incriminating evidence against other persons, which the investigation needed, was extorted.”

A clear confirmation that pre-mortem interrogations - such as once in the Kovalevsky forest - were at that time a permanent working tool of the Cheka / NKVD.

Another example, a later one, reminds us that defectors and saboteurs also appeared in besieged Leningrad - as a rule, from among the captured Soviet citizens. They usually tried to find shelter with relatives, and if they failed, severe punishment awaited everyone. On June 16, 1942, the military tribunal of the Baltic Fleet sentenced to death and confiscation of property three relatives of the deserter and saboteur Emelyanov - his wife, evacuation hospital employee Nadezhda Afanasyevna Emelyanova, brother-in-law Vasily Afanasyevich Voitko-Vasiliev and mother-in-law Alexandra Ignatievna Voitko-Vasilieva, as well as the wife of another saboteur Kulikov, postman of the 28th post office Maria Petrovna Kulikova. All of them admitted to assisting dangerous relatives, as well as receiving money from the enemy. From Emelyanova’s testimony: “In total, I received 7,000 rubles; I committed treason not for political reasons and not because I was hostile to Soviet power, but solely due to moral depression due to the death of my father and hunger.”

Finally, two more high-profile cases - geography teacher Alexei Ivanovich Vinokurov and senior auditor-inspector of the Leningrad city department of public education Alexei Mikhailovich Kruglov. The first not only “systematically carried out counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet agitation among school employees, students and those around him,” but also kept a diary filled with very risky statements. Here is just one quote: “Everyone lives in hopes of a speedy deliverance and each believes in it in his own way. The population endures unheard of hardships, many die, but, oddly enough, there are still many people in the city who believe in the victory of the adventurers.”

The sentence given to the geography teacher on March 16, 1943 by the military tribunal of the USSR NKVD troops of the Leningrad District and the rear guards of the Leningrad Front was still the same - execution; it was carried out on March 19.

Vinokurov’s siege diary, it should be added, was published in the 21st century.

The case of Alexei Mikhailovich Kruglov became even more noticeable. He was arrested on January 26, 1943, shortly after he told his friends: “If you see a car or carriage with a swastika driving along Nevsky, then know that I am riding in them. Feel free to take off your hat and come over.” During the investigation, it turned out that Kruglov was in contact with representatives of German intelligence and even agreed to take the post of governor of the city after the occupation of Leningrad. On April 8, 1943, a military tribunal sentenced the failed governor to capital punishment with confiscation of property; on April 14, the sentence was carried out.

A special place in the life of justice in the blockaded city was occupied by purely military crimes committed by career soldiers and officers of the Leningrad Front. One of the eloquent examples is the sentence passed on December 2, 1941 by the front military tribunal to the former commander and commissar of the 80th Infantry Division, Ivan Mikhailovich Frolov and Konstantin Dmitrievich Ivanov. Both of them, having received a verbal order from the commander to break through the enemy blockade in their sector, “had a defeatist attitude towards the implementation of the combat order of the Front Command, showed cowardice and criminal inaction, and Frolov told two representatives of the front 3 hours before the start of the operation that he did not believe in successful outcome of the operation."

The tribunal’s verdict stated: “Frolov and Ivanov violated the military oath, dishonored the high rank of a soldier of the Red Army and, with their cowardly defeatist actions, caused serious damage to the troops of the Leningrad Front.” Both of them were stripped of their military ranks and shot.

And some more statistics: according to a memo from the special department of the NKVD of the Leningrad Front, addressed to Headquarters representative Kliment Voroshilov, from May to December 1942 alone, almost four thousand soldiers and officers were arrested for espionage, sabotage, treasonable intentions, defeatist agitation, desertion and self-mutilation; Of these, 1,538 people were sentenced to capital punishment.

...The time has come to move on to the most difficult chapter of military history, one of the most dramatic parts of this already difficult book - to the executions in the lands occupied by the Nazis. The central part of Leningrad, as everyone knows, was able to be defended from the enemy at the cost of enormous efforts and losses, but the suburbs - including Tsarskoe Selo, Peterhof, Krasnoe Selo, then belonging to the Leningrad region, but now included within the city limits - found themselves under the Germans . It was a truly tragic period in the history of these suburbs. It is no coincidence that the poetess Vera Inber wrote in her poem “Pulkovo Meridian,” created in 1941–1943:

We will take revenge for everything: for our city,

The great creation of Petrovo,

For residents left homeless,

For the Hermitage, dead as a tomb,

For the gallows in the park over the water,

Where did young Pushkin become a poet...

Although Vera Mikhailovna was not entirely accurate - apparently, the Nazis did not erect gallows in Tsarskoye Selo parks, but they often shot there. Pushkin resident Pavel Bazilevich, who found the occupation as an 11-year-old child and lived with his mother in the left half-circle of the Catherine Palace, recalled: “For water, I went to the park to the spring of the monument, Girl with a Jug,” the only place with clean drinking water. I walked through Triangular Square, My Own Garden and further down. Every morning I saw a terrible picture. A German came out of the palace and led a man in front of him. Often these were women with children. The fascist led them to a crater near the Evening Hall and shot them in the back or the back of the head with a pistol, and then pushed them into the pit. This is how the Germans dealt with the Jews. They didn't pay attention to me. I remember this: a German executioner, always dressed in a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.”

Not only Jews were shot. Acts on the atrocities of the Nazi invaders, drawn up in 1944–1945 by special commissions after the liberation of the Leningrad suburbs from occupation, recorded: people were executed in Pushkin, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, and Krasnoe Selo. In Pavlovsk, for example, as the local commission was able to establish, the occupation authorities shot over 227 residents and hanged six.

Mass executions took place on the territory of Pavlovsky Park, in the area of ​​mass graves, but not only there; When the Nazis retreated, ordinary Pavlovsk trees were used to deal with local residents - and Anna Ivanovna Zelenova, director of the Pavlovsk palace and park, noted in February 1944 that “even now the tree branches are broken and the ropes are dangling.”

It was not possible to collect clear statistics for the city of Pushkin; The number of those executed was estimated by the 1945 commission at 250–300 people; modern historians of the Holocaust believe that up to 800 Jews alone were exterminated. They were shot on the Rose Field, in the Lyceum Garden, in Aleksandrovsky and Babolovsky parks. Witness Ksenia Dmitrievna Bolshakova told how already on September 20, three days after their invasion of Pushkin, the Germans exterminated an entire group of Jews in the square in front of the Catherine Palace: “...Then they opened fire from machine guns. This is how these children were shot. The corpses of the executed fifteen adults and 23 children lay on the square for about 12 days, and then 2 German officers came to my room, one of them spoke Russian well, who suggested that I remove the stinking corpses from the palace square. I and several citizens from among the residents of the city of Pushkin buried corpses in craters on the palace square, and some of the corpses, about 5 pieces, were buried in the Own garden opposite the room of Alexander II, in Catherine Park. Buried in a trench."

Pavel Bazilevich also recalled something else: “The German commandant’s office was then located in the pharmacy building opposite the Avangard cinema.” Here, on electric lighting poles, the Nazis hanged those they considered guilty of something. There they hanged my comrade Vanya Yaritsa along with his father.” Another resident of Pushkin, Nina Zenkovich, echoes him: “The Germans used the lamp posts on Komsomolskaya, Vasenko streets and near the Lyceum as gallows, and in the park opposite the Avangard cinema, where the chapel now stands, there was a gallows on which people were hanged with signs on the chest “I am a partisan” or “I am a marauder”..."

Gallows, as another witness, Anna Mikhailovna Alexandrova, told the 1945 commission, stood throughout Pushkin during the occupation: “There were a lot of gallows with hanged people throughout the city: on the street. Komsomolskaya, opposite st. Comintern and at the Alexander Palace, - with the inscriptions: “For communication with the partisans”, “Jew (Jews)”. The same witness Averina, who added one more address to the mournful topography: “When I went to buy potatoes in early October 1941, I saw hanged people on Oktyabrsky Boulevard.”

In general, almost all of Pushkin was then lined with gallows, and the bodies of the hanged were not allowed to be removed for weeks. A clear confirmation of the kind of “Ordnung” the fascist war machine brought to Russian soil.

This is evidenced by a fragment of the memoirs of Svetlana Belyaeva, the daughter of the outstanding science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev, who was then forced to stay in Pushkin for health reasons: “I almost didn’t go out into the street, I watched life through a peephole melted in the frosty glass. Through it I could see a boarded-up “sweet” stall, trees covered in frost and a post with a “transition” arrow... One day, after breathing through the peephole, I clung to the window, and my heart sank - instead of the “transition” arrow, a man with a plywood sheet was hanging on the crossbar on the chest. There was a small crowd standing near the pillar. While hanging, the Germans drove all passers-by to the scene of the incident for warning. Numb with horror, I looked out the window, unable to take my eyes off the hanged man, and loudly chattered my teeth.

Neither mother nor grandmother were at home at that moment. When my mother returned, I rushed to her, trying to tell her about what I had seen, but I just burst into tears. Having calmed down, I told my mother about the hanged man. After listening to me, my mother, in an unnaturally calm voice, answered me that she had seen it too.

Why him, why? - I asked, tugging at my mother’s sleeve. Half turning away, my mother said to the side:

It is written on the board that he is a bad judge and a friend of the Jews.

The hanged man was not removed for almost a whole week, and he hung, dusted with snow, swaying in the strong wind. After it was removed, the pole was empty for several days, then they hanged a woman on it, calling her a burglar. There were people who knew her who said that the woman, like us, moved from a broken house to another apartment, and went to her place to get things.”

Why were the occupiers executed? Jews - for nationality, communists - for belonging to the party, the rest, as the reader has already understood, for various things - for connections with partisans and Red Army soldiers, for opposing the occupying power and violating the norms and rules established by it, sometimes for criminal offenses: in Pushkin at the time The occupation was hungry and cold, people got their food as best they could.

And Olga Fedorovna Berggolts, who found herself in Pushkin literally a day after his release, recalled another crime for which local residents were threatened with execution: “On the gate leading to the courtyard of the Catherine Palace, there is a stenciled inscription on plywood in German and Russian: “Stop.” . Restricted area. For being in the zone - execution. Commandant of the city of Pushkin."

And at the gates of Alexander Park there are two plywood boards, also in Russian and German. On one there is an inscription: “Entrance into the park is strictly prohibited. For violation - execution." On another: “Civilians, even accompanied by German soldiers, are not allowed to enter.” (I give the inscription with all the spelling features.) We removed these boards and took them with us. Then we entered our park, for entering which only yesterday a Russian person was threatened with execution...”

There were almost no executions in Peterhof - and only because the Germans quickly organized the evacuation of local residents to Ropsha, but there they began in full swing. Witness Pulkina, interviewed by the commission in 1944, recalled the following episode: “They held a meeting at which they asked to hand over communists and Jews. There were no Jews; one communist, Ropshinsky, was present, but he was not extradited, and the next day he was hanged anyway. He hung for a very long time, he was photographed, and then many soldiers had cards, who showed them off, boasting. I saw other hanged cards even earlier; many soldiers also had them. Showing the cards, they watched the face to see if there was any sympathy or compassion.”

Gallows, gallows... One can imagine the impression all these reprisals made on the residents of the Leningrad suburbs, for whom public execution was a distant relic of tsarism. The occupiers sowed fear, but hatred towards them was even stronger.

This hatred found vent in the last public execution in the entire history of the city. Almost eight months have passed since the day of the Great Victory - and at 11 o’clock in the morning on January 5, 1946, on the Vyborg side of Leningrad near the Gigant cinema: “The sentence was carried out on the Nazi villains... sentenced by the Military Tribunal of the Leningrad Military District for committing mass executions, atrocities and violence against the civilian Soviet population, burning and looting of cities and villages, deportation of Soviet citizens into German slavery - death by hanging" (from LenTASS report).

Eight people then ended up on the gallows: the former military commandant of Pskov, Major General Heinrich Remlinger, and those who served in special forces, Captain Karl Hermann Strüfing, Lieutenant Eduard Sonnenfeld, Chief Sergeants Ernst Böhm and Fritz Engel, Chief Corporal Erwin Skotki, privates Gerhard Janicke and Erwin Ernst Herer. Each of them accounted for more than a dozen ruined lives, which they themselves admitted to during the trial, which took place in the Vyborg Palace of Culture. We were talking about war crimes committed mainly in the current Pskov region.

The Military Tribunal of the Leningrad Military District has been in session since December 28, 1945; on the evening of January 4, 1946, the verdict was pronounced, and the execution took place the next morning. According to LenTASS, “numerous workers present in the square greeted the execution of the sentence with unanimous approval.” In Leningradskaya Pravda, the newspaper’s war correspondent Mark Lanskoy succinctly reported on what happened: “Eight war criminals hung from a strong crossbar in Leningrad yesterday. In the last minutes, they again met the hating eyes of the people. They again heard whistles and curses, escorting them to a shameful death.

The cars started moving... The last point of support left from under the feet of the convicts. The sentence was carried out."

Leningrad writer Pavel Luknitsky also witnessed the execution and left a detailed description of it, which the reader will find at the end of this book. Let us quote here a short passage about the key moment of the execution: “The condemned do not move. They all froze, the last two or three minutes of life remained for them.

“Comrade Commandant, I order the sentence to be carried out!” - the prosecutor commands loudly and clearly.

The commandant, in a sheepskin coat, with his hand on his earflap hat, turns sharply from the jeep to the gallows, the general jumps off the car and steps back. "Willis" was about to reverse, drop the chair, stop, and remain in place until the end of the execution.

The commandant makes a sign with his hand, says something, the fifth soldier on each vehicle begins to throw a noose around the neck of the condemned.

I am omitting here the naturalistic details of the moment of execution - the reader does not need them. I will give just one single point. When the trucks started moving very slowly at once, and when the ground began to disappear from under the feet of the convicts, each of them was involuntarily forced to take several small steps, Sonenfeld, unlike the others, took a decisive step forward in order to quickly jump off the wooden platform of the body himself. so that the noose would jerk him more sharply. His eyes at that moment were decisive and stubborn... Sonnenfeld died first. All convicts accepted death silently and without any gestures.”

On the same day, Luknitsky wrote down, summing up his own feelings: “Probably, if I had seen a public execution before the war, such an execution would have made a terrible impression on me. But, obviously, like for everyone who spent the entire war in Leningrad and at the front, nothing can be too strong an impression. I didn’t think that in general everything would turn out to be so relatively unimpressive for me. And I didn’t see any people in the square who were affected in any way, other than some excitement, by the impressions of this spectacle. Probably, everyone who survived the war and hated the vile enemy felt the justice of the verdict and felt a sense of satisfaction, knowing what kind of bestial creatures were those who were hanged today for all their countless atrocities.”

The fairness of the verdict is, of course, the exact words and today they do not raise the slightest doubt.

That was, let’s put the point one more time, the last public death penalty in the history of the city.

author Menyailov Alexey Alexandrovich

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An offline comrade shared four photos.
The photographs were taken in Leningrad on the square in front of the Gigant cinema, January 5, 1946.
This is the only public execution on the banks of the Neva in the entire 20th century.
On the current Kalinin Square, not far from the place where the Gigant cinema stood, and now there is the Gigant Hall concert hall, eight German war criminals, who committed their atrocities mainly in the Pskov region, were hanged.

U nikoberg there is a detailed description of how this execution took place.

Here is a list of those hanged and a short list of what they did.
01.
1. Major General Remlinger - organized 14 punitive expeditions during which several hundred settlements in the Pskov region were burned.
About 8,000 people were killed - mostly women and children, and his personal responsibility was confirmed by documents and testimony of witnesses.
This means that he personally gave the appropriate orders for the destruction of settlements and populations.
For example, in Karamyshevo, 239 people were shot, another 229 were driven and burned in wooden buildings, in Utorgosh, 250 people were shot, on the Slavkovichi - Ostrov road, 150 people were shot, in the village of Pikalikha, 180 residents were driven into houses and then burned.
2. Captain Struefing Karl - 07/20-21/44 in the Ostrov region 25 people were shot.
He gave orders to his subordinates to shoot boys aged 10 and 13.
In February 44 - Zamoshki - 24 people were shot with a machine gun.
During the retreat, for fun, he shot Russians he came across along the way with a carbine.
Personally killed about 200 people.

Below the cut are photos 18+

02.
3. Oberfeldwebel Engel Fritz - with his platoon burned 7 settlements, 80 people were shot and approximately 100 were burned in houses and barns, the personal destruction of 11 women and children was proven.
4. Oberfeldwebel Bem Ernst - in February 44 he burned Dedovichi, burned Krivets, Olkhovka, and several other villages - 10 in total.
About 60 people were shot, 6 by him personally..


03.
5. Lieutenant Sonnenfeld Eduard - from December 1943 to February 1944 he burned the village of Strashevo, Plyussky district, killing 40 people, the village. Zapolye - about 40 people were killed, the population of the village. Seglitsy, evicted to dugouts, were thrown with grenades in the dugouts, then finished off - about 50 people, village. Maslino, Nikolaevo - about 50 people were killed, village. Rows - about 70 people were killed, the village was also burned. Bor, Skoritsy. Zarechye, Ostrov and others.
The lieutenant personally took part in all the executions, and in total he killed about 200 people.
6. Soldier Janike Gergard - in the village of Malye Luzi, 88 residents (mostly female residents) were herded into 2 bathhouses and a barn and burned.
Personally killed more than 300 people.


04.
7. Soldier Herer Erwin Ernst - participation in the liquidation of 23 villages - Volkovo, Martyshevo, Detkovo, Selishche.
Personally killed more than 100 people - mostly women and children.
8. Oberefreiter Skotka Erwin - took part in the execution of 150 people in Luga, burned 50 houses there. Participated in the burning of the villages of Bukino, Borki, Troshkino, Novoselye, Podborovye, Milutino. Personally burned 200 houses. Participated in the liquidation of the villages of Rostkovo, Moromerka, and the Andromer state farm.

Execution of fascist monsters near the Gigant cinema on Kalinin Square. Leningrad, January 5, 1946.

List of those hanged:

1. Major General Heinrich Remlinger, born in 1882. Occupation commandant of the city of Pskov in 1943-1944. Organized 14 punitive expeditions during which several hundred settlements in the Pskov region were burned, about 8,000 Soviet citizens were killed - mostly women and children, and his personal responsibility was confirmed by documents and testimony of witnesses - that is, issuing appropriate orders for the destruction of settlements and population, for example - in Karamyshevo, 239 people were shot, another 229 were driven and burned in wooden buildings, in Utorgosh - 250 people were shot, on the Slavkovichi - Ostrov road 150 people were shot, in the village of Pikalikha - 180 residents were driven into houses and then burned.

2. Captain Strüfing Karl, born in 1912, company commander of the 2nd “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division. 07/20-21/44 in the Ostrov region he shot 25 people. He gave the order to his subordinates to shoot boys aged 10 and 13. In February 44 – Zamoshki – 24 people were shot with a machine gun. During the retreat, for fun, he shot Soviet citizens he came across along the way with a carbine. Personally killed about 200 people.

3. Oberfeldwebel Engel Fritz, born in 1915, commander of the punitive platoon of the 2nd “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division. With his platoon, he burned 7 settlements, while 80 Soviet citizens were shot and approximately 100 were burned in houses and barns, the personal destruction of 11 women and children was proven.

4. Oberfeldwebel Boehm Ernst, born in 1911, commander of a punitive platoon of the 1st “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division. In February 1944, together with a platoon, he burned Dedovichi, burned Krivets, Olkhovka, and several other villages - 10 in total, while about 60 Soviet citizens were shot, 6 by him personally.

5. Lieutenant Eduard Sonnenfeld, born in 1911, commander of the special engineering group of the 322nd Wehrmacht Infantry Regiment. From December 1943 to February 1944 he burned the village of Strashevo, Plyussky district, 40 people were killed, the village of Zapolye - about 40 people were killed, the population of the village of Seglitsy, evicted to dugouts, was thrown with grenades in the dugouts, then finished off - about 50 people, the villages of Maslino, Nikolaevo - About 50 people were killed, the village of Ryady - about 70 people were killed, the villages of Bor, Skoritsa, Zarechye, Ostrov and others were also burned. He took an active part in all executions, in total he killed about 200 Soviet citizens.

6. Private Janicke Gergard, born in 1921, flamethrower of the company of the 2nd “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division. In 1944, in the village of Malye Luzi, 88 residents (mostly female residents) were herded into 2 bathhouses and a barn and burned alive. Personally killed more than 300 Soviet citizens.

7. Private Herer Erwin Ernst, born in 1912, machine gunner of the company of the 2nd “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division. As part of the company, he took part in the destruction of 23 villages - including Volkovo, Martyshevo, Detkovo, Selishche. Personally killed over 100 Soviet citizens - mostly women and children.

8. Oberrefreitor Skotka Erwin, born in 1919, commander of the Sonderkommando of the 2nd “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division. He took part in the execution of 150 Soviet citizens in Luga, burning 50 houses there. Participated in the burning of the villages of Bukino, Borki, Troshkino, Novoselye, Podborovye, Milyutino. Personally burned 200 houses. Participated in the destruction of the villages of Rostkovo, Moromerka, and the Andromer state farm.

Three others convicted by the same court-martial:

1. Oberleutnant Wiese Franz, born in 1909, company commander of the 2nd “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division, was found worthy of leniency - 20 years in prison.

2. Feldwebel Vogel Erich Paul, platoon commander of the 2nd “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division, was found worthy of leniency - 20 years in prison.

3. Private Duret Arno, born in 1920, radio operator of the company of the 2nd “special purpose” battalion of the 21st Luftwaffe airfield division, was found worthy of leniency - 15 years of camp detention.

The humane Soviet leadership provided lawyers to all the fascist bastards.

On January 5, 1946, a public execution took place in our city. The only one on the banks of the Neva in the entire 20th century. On the current Kalinin Square, not far from the place where the Gigant cinema stood, and now there is the Gigant Hall concert hall, eight German war criminals, who committed their atrocities mainly in the Pskov region, were hanged.

The Germans held on bravely

In the morning of that day, almost the entire square was filled with people. This is how one of the eyewitnesses describes what he saw: “The cars, in the backs of which there were Germans, drove in reverse under the gallows. Our guard soldiers deftly, but without haste, put the nooses around their necks. The cars slowly drove forward. The Nazis swayed in the air. The people began to disperse, and a guard was posted at the gallows.”

The newspapers didn’t write about where and when the execution would take place and they didn’t talk about it on the radio,” People’s Artist of Russia Ivan Krasko recalled in a conversation with Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondents. - But thanks to rumors, Leningraders knew everything. I was fifteen years old at the time, and this sight attracted me. They brought criminals, people gathered in the square shouted curses at them - many of them had loved ones killed by the Nazis. I was amazed that the Germans behaved courageously. Only one began to scream heart-rendingly before execution. Another tried to calm him down, and the third looked at them with undisguised contempt.

But when the support was knocked out from under the feet of the executed, the mood of the crowd changed, continues Ivan Ivanovich. - Some seemed numb, some lowered their heads, some fainted. I also felt unwell, I quickly left the square and went home. What I saw then will be remembered for the rest of my life. And even now, when some movie shows an execution, I turn off the TV.

And here’s what siege survivor Nina Yarovtseva, who lived near Kalinin Square in 1946, remembers:

On the day this happened, my mother had a shift at the factory. But Aunt Tanya, our neighbor, went to watch the execution and took me with her. I was eleven years old then. We arrived early, but there were a lot of people. I remember the crowd making a strange noise, as if everyone was worried for some reason. When the truck with the gallows drove off, the Germans hung and fluttered, for some reason I suddenly got scared and hid behind Aunt Tanya. Although she hated the Nazis terribly and throughout the war she wanted them all to be killed. Having found out where we were, my mother attacked Aunt Tanya: “Why did you drag the child there?!” If you like it, see for yourself!” Then for several nights in a row I hardly slept: I had nightmares and woke up. A few years later, my mother admitted that she dripped valerian into my tea in the evenings.

Interesting detail. According to one of the eyewitnesses, when the sentry was removed from the square, unknown persons removed the boots from the hanged men.

An eye for an eye?

On April 19, 1943, when a turning point was outlined in the course of the Great Patriotic War, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR appeared with a long title “On punitive measures for Nazi villains guilty of murder and torture of the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices." According to the decree, “fascist villains convicted of murdering and torturing civilians and captured Red Army soldiers, as well as spies and traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens, are punishable by death by hanging.” And further: “The execution of sentences should be carried out publicly, in front of the people, and the bodies of those hanged should be left on the gallows for several days, so that everyone knows how they are punished and what retribution will befall anyone who commits violence and reprisals against the civilian population and who betrays their homeland "

The essence of the decree is to treat the fascists the way they treat our people, says Viktor Ivanov, professor at the Institute of History of St. Petersburg State University. “It was reminiscent of revenge, but in the harsh conditions of wartime, such a position of the Soviet authorities was completely justified.

Although there are some nuances here. According to the professor, the German invaders publicly executed the partisans and those who helped them. However, from the point of view of international law, partisans, in modern terms, are illegal armed groups. As for captured Red Army soldiers, they were usually not killed, although many died from hunger, disease, and unbearable working conditions. The German command believed that they did not exist, because, unlike Germany, the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention of 1929, regulating how prisoners of war should be treated. Joseph Stalin is credited with the following phrase: “We have no prisoners, but only traitors and traitors to the motherland.” Therefore, the Nazis treated the captured British, Americans and French more humanely than Soviet citizens.

Understanding all this, the Soviet authorities sought to ensure that people who had not committed serious crimes did not fall under the decree: enemy soldiers and officers who were only fulfilling their military duty, says Viktor Ivanov. - Investigators, prosecutors, judges were instructed to prepare these trials very carefully.

After the decree was issued, Smersh investigators began working in the liberated territories. They tried to identify the perpetrators of terrible crimes. Then this information was sent to the camps where German prisoners of war were held. The suspects were detained.

During the preparation of the Leningrad trial, more than a hundred witnesses from among Soviet citizens were questioned, but only eighteen were summoned to court, the professor emphasizes. - Only those whose testimony did not raise any doubts.

Why did the trial take place in Leningrad, although from a legal point of view it should have been held in Pskov? After all, the defendants mainly committed their atrocities on the territory of this region.

Apparently, the goal was to show Leningraders with their own eyes who was the cause of their incredible suffering during the siege, says Viktor Ivanov.

Among the defendants was Major General

St. Petersburg residents are well aware of the Vyborg Palace of Culture, located not far from the Finlyandsky Station, where, in particular, theater troupes touring our city show performances. This building was built in 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. It was here that the trial of eleven German war criminals began at the end of December 1945.

The trial was widely covered in newspapers. For example, large materials appeared in Leningradskaya Pravda every day, including January 1. There was a translator in the hall, a German by nationality. He gave a receipt that he would translate from Russian into German and vice versa with utmost accuracy.

The most prominent figure among them was Major General Heinrich Remlinger, who was 63 years old at the time of his execution. His military career began in 1902. He was the military commandant of Pskov and at the same time supervised the district commandant’s offices subordinate to him, as well as “special purpose units.” In February 1945 he was captured.

The materials of the trial proved that Remlinger organized fourteen punitive expeditions, during which several villages were burned and about eight thousand people were killed, mostly women and children, says Doctor of Historical Sciences Nikita Lomagin.

During the court hearings, the major general tried to justify himself by saying that he was only following the orders of his superiors.

Among the defendants was 26-year-old Chief Corporal Erwin Skotki. A native of the city of Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, the son of a policeman, a member of Hitler's Youth Union since 1935.

At the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War, Skotki was involved in issuing uniforms to military personnel of one of the Wehrmacht units, says Viktor Ivanov. - However, he was not satisfied with the small salary: not everyone knows this, but during the war, German soldiers received a salary in hand. And then he was offered a promotion and a higher salary, but in a punitive detachment. Skotki agreed without hesitation. At the trial, he pretended to be a fool: he didn’t know that he would have to burn villages and shoot people. Allegedly he thought that he would only guard cargo and prisoners of war. Skotki was identified by several witnesses at once.

Let us note that the three defendants managed to avoid the gallows. Their guilt was not so great, and therefore they received various terms of hard labor.

The death penalty was abolished

In 1945-1946, trials of war criminals followed by public executions took place in various regions of the country - in Crimea, Krasnodar Territory, Ukraine, Belarus. 88 people were hanged, eighteen of them were generals. Work to identify such criminals continued in the future, but they soon stopped executing convicts.

The fact is that in May 1947, the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the abolition of the death penalty” was published. Paragraph 2 read: “for crimes punishable by death penalty under current laws, imprisonment in forced labor camps for a period of 25 years shall be applied in peacetime.”

An interesting fact: after the end of the Great Patriotic War, there were 66 thousand German prisoners of war on the territory of our city and region. Almost 59 thousand of them subsequently returned to their homeland.

BY THE WAY

In addition to the fascist invaders, terrible atrocities were committed in the Leningrad region by traitors who came over to their side. In the forties, fifties and even sixties, trials of these people took place in various cities in the region. As a rule, they were sentenced to long prison terms. There were no cases of public executions.

In June 1970, in Leningrad, if not the very first, then one of the first attempts to hijack an airplane abroad was made. She was unsuccessful. One of those convicted in this case, Eduard Kuznetsov, subsequently wrote the book “Step to the Left, Step to the Right.” The author recalls that in the camps he met people who were serving sentences for collaborating with the occupiers. According to Kuznetsov, they all unanimously denied that they had participated in terrible actions against civilians.

OPINION OF A PSYCHOLOGIST

Dangerous sight

Such a crowd instinct is a kind of atavism, a relic deeply rooted in our nature, says psychologist Evgeniy Krainev. “But if after such a spectacle you conduct a survey among the “spectators,” very few will say that they experienced positive emotions. Most simply tickle their nerves, people try in such a strange way to suppress the fear of death in their souls. In any case, this does not bring anything positive either for an individual person or for the crowd. Such spectacles are especially dangerous for children and teenagers. Even in the case when fair punishment overtakes the obviously guilty.

WHAT ABOUT THEM?

There are still public executions around the world.

In the twentieth century, more and more countries began to abandon the death penalty. Today this penalty is not applied in 130 states. However, there are 68 countries in the world that retain the death penalty. In some of them, people are still being killed in public. These are, in particular, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, North Korea, Somalia.

Execution of German war criminals in Leningrad in 1946.