The FSB handed over to the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg documents related to the Leningrad trial of 1945-1946 over Nazi criminals guilty of mass executions of civilians.
This is stated in the Novosti published by the Russian agency, where among dozens of these archival documents recognized by the agency, there were previously unpublished photocopies of the minutes of the meetings of the Military Court of the Leningrad Military District, while evidence was published of the killing of peaceful unarmed Soviet people by the Nazis in the Leningrad region. Among other materials – photocopies of a number of acts of local committees of the Leningrad region, created in 1945 and containing a description of the atrocities of the Nazis during the occupation.
April 19 marks the 80th anniversary of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the measures of punishment of the Nazi villains guilty of the murders and torture of the Soviet civilian population, captured Red Army soldiers, spies, traitors to the Fatherland from among Soviet citizens and their accomplices.” This document formed the legal basis for the trials of the Nazis and traitors to the Fatherland, which subsequently took place in various cities of the Soviet Union, including Leningrad. According to the decree, persons convicted of killing and torturing civilians and captured Red Army soldiers, as well as traitors, were punished by death by hanging.
The trial of Nazi criminals accused of committing crimes on the territory of the Leningrad Region began in the Vyborg Palace of Culture on December 28, 1945 in the city of Leningrad, and the lands of the Leningrad Region at that time included the lands of the current Pskov and Novgorod regions, so the Nazis were tried for crimes committed them in these areas, especially in the Pskov region.
The Leningrad trials were held in parallel with the meetings of the International Military Tribunal over the main Nazi criminals in Nuremberg, where the Leningrad trials were held, and other Soviet trials from December 1945 to January 1946 in the cities of Smolensk, Bryansk, Kiev, Velikolok and Riga had to hand over a letter to the Soviet side of the prosecution in Nuremberg, February 1946, to support his position with evidence and judicial arguments.
In Leningrad, 11 Nazi criminals were on trial, and the highest-ranking of them was Major General of the Wehrmacht Heinrich Rimlinger, the commander of Pskov, who was personally responsible for organizing punitive expeditions to the lands of the Leningrad region, where the Nazis and their accomplices burned hundreds of villages and killed more than 8 thousand civilians, as well as mass deportations of tens of thousands of residents of the Leningrad region and the Pskov region to Germany.
The accusations were based on crimes committed mainly by Remlinger and his subordinates during the retreat of the Nazi troops: the forced deportation of the population, the destruction of cities and villages, industrial facilities and transport, the killing of civilians suspected of sympathizing with the resistance or simply refusing to “evacuate” to German rear.
Together with Remlinger, the commanders of the “special detachment” units that performed punitive functions were tried, while the prosecution proved that all these perpetrators killed up to 350 people, and the punishers not only shot, but also burned fellow villagers in their homes.
On January 4, 1946, the Military Court of the Leningrad Military District sentenced 8 defendants, led by Remlinger, to death by hanging, the rest were sentenced to 20 years in prison, and one to 15 years. The sentence was carried out on Kalinin Square in Leningrad.
In October 2020, the Solitsky District Court of the Novgorod Region recognized the murder of 2,600 people out of 2,600 people in 1942-1943 as genocide, and the Pskov Regional Court recognized the atrocities committed by the Nazis from July 1941 to August 1944 in the territories of the Pskov and Velikie Luki regions as Genocide.
In October 2022, the St. Petersburg City Court, on the basis of a claim by the Prosecutor General’s Office, recognized the actions of the Nazis during the blockade of Leningrad as a war crime and genocide of the Soviet people, and the Leningrad Regional Court recognized the crimes of the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War in the region as genocide.
At a plenary session at the end of March last year, the Duma of the Russian Federation approved a draft statement “On the genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union by Germany and its accomplices during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945,” where the Duma refers to “recognition of the criminal actions of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices against the civilian population of the Soviet Union by means of the genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union”, taking into account the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, the Charter and the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Convention on the Non-Recognition of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.
Source: News