The prosecutor’s office was carried away by history – Picture of the Day – Kommersant
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The Voronezh Regional Court has begun considering a lawsuit filed by the prosecutor’s office to recognize as genocide the murders of the inhabitants of the region by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. The prosecutor’s office calls the lawsuit a historical debt and claims that it provides information about previously unknown crimes. The court will have to study 19 volumes of materials and archival video recordings, as well as listen to the testimony of expert historians and victims of the war.
Judge of the Voronezh Regional Court Igor Checha on Thursday, April 13, began to consider the claim of the regional prosecutor Nikolai Savrun. He demands that the actions of the invaders in the region in 1942-1943 be recognized as genocide. There is no defendant in the case, so the first meeting was held with the participation of the plaintiff’s representative, Senior Counselor of Justice Igor Rudenko, and journalists. The application was submitted in the interests of the Russian Federation and an indefinite circle of persons – relatives of civilians and prisoners of war who died on the territory of the Voronezh region.
The application is accompanied by 19 volumes of materials containing evidence of the events of the seven-month occupation of the Voronezh region from July 1, 1942 to February 2, 1943. For example, they contain the conclusions of forensic medical examinations of the remains discovered by search engines in recent years. According to Mr. Rudenko, the materials contain new facts about the crimes of the invaders, which were unknown until today.
The lawsuit filed by the prosecutor’s office of the Voronezh region is the result of more than three months of work carried out on behalf of the Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov.
Since the autumn of last year, the courts of several regions of Russia, including the Belgorod Region and the Stavropol Territory, satisfied similar statements by local prosecutors. In October, the court in St. Petersburg acknowledged genocide blockade of Leningrad.
The stay of the invaders in the region, as the prosecutor writes in the suit, was accompanied by countless atrocities – violence, torture and murder of civilians and prisoners of war, their forced evacuation and work in concentration camps. Over 270 thousand residents of the Voronezh region were killed or evicted, the regional center was almost completely destroyed – out of 20 thousand buildings in the city, more than 18 thousand buildings were destroyed as a result of bombing.
The prosecutor’s office estimates the total damage in terms of modern money at almost 12 trillion rubles. The department has so far left unanswered the question of “Kommersant” about the significance of the lawsuit filed for the further recovery of reparations.
“The legal fact of recognizing genocide and war crimes in the territories of the Soviet Union occupied by the Germans is not only an obvious decision arising from the main results of the Nuremberg Trials, but the historical debt of society and the state to the victims of the war,” Igor Rudenko explained the essence of the claim. “Since the end of World War II attempts to deny historical events do not stop, the fact that the Soviet Union was the main victim of German Nazism is ignored.
Next week, Voronezh historian Nikolai Sapelkin, whose research formed the basis of the appeal to the Prosecutor General, after which work began on the lawsuit, will testify. For ten years, the People’s Feat project has been underway in the region: experts find witnesses, document the crimes of the invaders and investigate the places where they were committed. Historians, together with archaeologists, are still clarifying the number of deaths in mass graves in the Voronezh region.
“As soon as we realized that we had a significant evidence base, I turned to State Duma deputy Sergei Gavrilov to initiate a deputy request to the prosecutor general. We prepared a 30-page cover letter for it, listing the most cruel cases of atrocities committed by Italians, Hungarians and Germans against the inhabitants of the Voronezh region. The prosecutor’s office did significant work with archives and witnesses, after which it considered it possible to start an open trial, ”Nikolai Sapelkin told Kommersant.
The historian suggests that the regional trials are stages in the preparation of a large trial to recognize the genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union during the war. After that, in his opinion, the results of the process will be reported to the international community.
Political scientist Vladimir Slatinov believes that the suit of the prosecutor’s office of the Voronezh region fits into the federal trend, which is set by the supreme power.
“Today, counteracting Nazism is, let’s say, the nerve of state policy, it is postulated and manifested by the supreme power as a very important component of state policy in the field of spiritual values and moral education, and even in the field of interaction with other states. The prosecutor’s office is doing its bit by keeping the fight against Nazism in the center of public attention,” the expert says.
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