The FSB of the Russian Federation publishes documents about the war crimes of the Nazis in the German transit camp of prisoners of war "Dulag-205" near the village of Alekseevka near Stalingrad. The publication of the materials is timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the publication of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On Penalties for German Fascist 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". The service published interrogations of Nazi criminals, their sentence and the text of a memorandum from the head of the Main Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (GUVKR) Smersh Viktor Abakumov.

"Thousands of corpses found"

On April 19, 1943, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a Decree "On Penalties for German Fascist 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." The document provided for the death penalty by hanging for German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Finnish soldiers of the Wehrmacht, convicted of committing murders and tortures of civilians and captured Red Army soldiers, as well as for spies and traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens.

Investigating the crimes of the occupiers and their accomplices has become an important part of the work of Smersh's employees.

Thus, on September 2, 1943, the head of the GUVKR Smersh Viktor Abakumov reported to the Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee Vyacheslav Molotov about the liberation by Soviet troops of the German transit camp of prisoners of war "Dulag-205" near the village of Alekseevka near Stalingrad and about the evidence of Nazi atrocities found on its territory.

  • Record of the interrogation of prisoner of war Rudolf Kerpert
  • © Press Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation

"On the territory of the camp and near it, thousands of corpses of prisoners of war of the Red Army and commanders who died of exhaustion and cold were found, and several hundred tormented, exhausted from hunger and extremely exhausted by the past were liberated. servicemen of the Red Army," Abakumov said in a memorandum.

In this regard, the Smersh STATE COMMITTEE conducted an investigation, during which it was revealed that "German officers and soldiers, fulfilling the instructions of the German military command, treated prisoners of war with mockery, brutally exterminated them through mass beatings and shootings, created unbearable conditions of detention in the camp and starved them."

  • Record of the interrogation of prisoner of war Otto Mehler
  • © Press Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation

As the direct culprits of the death of Soviet people in the note of Abakumov were named: the former commandant of the camp "Dulag-205" Colonel Rudolf Kerpert, the former quartermaster of the 6th German army Lieutenant Colonel Werner Von-Kunovsky, the former counterintelligence officer at the camp Captain Wilhelm Längheld and the former aide-de-camp commandant Oberleutnant Otto Meder.

During an interrogation on June 23, 1943, Rudolf Kerpert admitted: "Prisoners of war, for example, were completely deprived of the opportunity to lie down, they slept sitting. I should note that due to the lack of fuel, the dugouts were not heated... After 5 December, the supply of food to prisoners of war ceased completely. Only occasionally was it possible to accidentally get a dead horse, which was boiled for prisoners of war. Thus, from December 5, 1942, a real famine began among the prisoners of war, on the basis of which a large mortality rate occurred among them: from December 10, about 50 people died daily. "

  • Protocol of interrogation of witness Konstantin Krupachenko
  • © Press Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation

The investigator clarified whether the camp commandant was aware of the decisions of the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the Procedure for the Supply of Prisoners of War with Food. Kerpert replied that prisoners of war should be supplied in the same way as soldiers of his own army.

"Inhuman conditions"

According to declassified documents, water was not delivered to the camp, and instead the prisoners were forced to use dirty snow. Preparing food from the occasional garbage given to them, the prisoners of the camp burned the clothes of their dead comrades due to lack of fuel.

"The Nazis did not comply with any international humanitarian norms with regard to Soviet prisoners of war. In the first years of the war, they did not even count the captured Red Army soldiers. It was an absolutely inhuman attitude, "said Maxim Sinitsyn, a graduate student at IVI RAS, in an interview with RT.

In Dulag-205, Soviet prisoners of war suffered not only from inhumane conditions of detention and hunger, but also from constant bullying by the guards. Dogs were set against prisoners, and those who could not perform heavy work in the construction of defensive structures and the construction of roads were killed on the spot. Prisoners could lose their lives for criticizing the camp administration in a domestic conversation.

"There was no trial, they were shot without trial, on the orders of Colonel Kerpert. I am a lawyer by education and I understand perfectly well that these were illegal shootings, simply murders. But I have already said that in German camps prisoners of war are treated differently than in other countries. For example, in Alekseyevka, a Russian prisoner of war could be beaten with impunity for the smallest offense, or even without any guilt at all, "said Otto Meder during an interrogation on August 27, 1943.

The direct perpetrators of the crimes, he called the Quartermaster of the 6th German Army, Lieutenant Colonel Kunovsky, and the commandant of the camp, Colonel Kerpert.

  • Photos of the sentenced
  • © Press Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation

"I think that they would not have committed these crimes if such treatment of Russians was punished in the German army," Meder stressed.

On October 10, 1944, the military tribunal of the 3rd Baltic Front sentenced Kerpert and Captain Karl Frister, Captain Fritz Mosentin, Oberleutnant Otto Meder, Captain Kurt Wolfart and Captain Richard Seydlitz who served under his command in the Dulag 205 camp.

  • © Press Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation

"The criminal acts of all the accused in their totality created those inhuman conditions in the camp, as a result of which more than 3000,19 Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation, beatings and were shot. By the described atrocities, the defendants committed a crime under Article I of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 1943, <>," the verdict says.

All the accused were sentenced to death by firing squad. On October 13, 1944, the sentence was carried out.

"Some publicists are trying to create an image of "knights in white gloves" for the Wehrmacht today, who allegedly only fought on the battlefield, although this is absolutely not the case, and a huge share of the blame for the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the occupied Soviet territories lies with the Wehrmacht. The publication of these documents once again proves this fact, "said Dmitry Surzhik, a senior researcher at the Institute of Informatics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in an interview with RT.

  • Certificate of execution
  • © Press Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation

According to him, the prisoner-of-war camps organized by the Wehrmacht were an important tool for implementing the policy of genocide against the Soviet people.

"Soviet prisoners of war became victims of the criminal racial policy of the Nazis, guided by which the Third Reich did not comply with the requirements of international conventions against the Red Army. Therefore, of the 5.7 million Soviet servicemen who were captured by the Germans, about 3.3 million died, "Surzhik summed up.