The FSB declassified data on the executions of civilians by the Nazis in the Smolensk region

The FSB Directorate for the Smolensk Region declassified and transferred data on Nazi crimes during the Great Patriotic War to the state archive of the region’s modern history. In particular, they talk about the execution of more than 1 thousand people.

Provides data from documents TASS. The murder of more than 1 thousand civilians is stated in the testimony of the German tankman Karl Schneider. According to him, civilians “were stripped and took off their shoes, then shot with automatic weapons.” Among them were women and children.

As follows from the testimony of German prisoner of war Heinz Winkler, after the occupation of Smolensk by the Wehrmacht, the city’s population was subjected to mass extermination. “At the slightest suspicion, the SS took away entire families, took them out of the city and shot them,” his testimony says.

At first, up to 30 thousand prisoners of war were kept in the Smolensk camp. In the winter of 1941–1942 they were hardly fed or clothed. Because of this, several thousand people died. The testimony of Corporal Hans Farber of the 268th Wehrmacht Infantry Division states that he and other Nazis set fire to a village of six to eight houses. They boarded up houses and did not give civilians and 15 partisans the opportunity to escape. “In general, I am not able to remember the number of Soviet civilians shot and hanged by the firing squad, since it is significant,” his testimony says.

German troops entered the Smolensk region on July 16, 1941. The region was liberated in October 1943. During the war years, the population was halved – to approximately 1 million people.

Smolensk Regional Court in the summer of 2023 admitted the fact of genocide against Soviet citizens during the fascist occupation. The prosecutor’s office said that between 1941 and 1943, at least 540,268 people were killed in the Smolensk region and sent to Germany for hard labor. During the occupation, the cities of Smolensk, Vyazma, Yartsevo, Dorogobuzh, Rudnya, Velizh, and the workers’ villages of Izdeshkovo and Safonovo were almost completely destroyed. Gzhatsk (Gagarin), Dukhovshchina, Yelnya, Sychevka, Roslavl were severely damaged. The occupiers destroyed and burned at least 98,172 residential buildings.