Krasnodar trial

The occupation of Krasnodar lasted six months. During this time, the Nazis and their accomplices destroyed the city and killed 11,472 people (before the war there were about 200,000 inhabitants), of which 4,972 men, 4,322 women, 2187 children. To speed up executions, the invaders used "gas chambers" ("gazenvageny") - sealed trucks, where 7000 Krasnodar were poisoned with exhaust gases. It was a deliberate punitive policy of units of the 17th German army under the command of Colonel General R. Ruof. The head of the Krasnodar Gestapo, Colonel K. Christman, planned the killings. The German Gestapo officers and the SS-10-A sonderkommand, consisting of traitors to the motherland, worked in concrete cries. About 200 people served in it. Alas, at first they managed to catch a few. But even 11 suspects were enough to start the world's first open trial of Nazi accomplices. At the trial in Krasnodar on July 14-17, 1943, members of the SS-10-A sonderkommando and their assistants were accused: Kladov, Kotomtsev, Lastovina, Misan, Naptsok, Pavlov, Paramonov, Pushkarev, Rechkalov, Tishchenko, Tuchkov. The chairman of the court was Colonel of Justice Mayorov, a representative of the Military Tribunal of the North Caucasus Front, and the state prosecutor was Major General Justice L. Yachenin. The defendants were defended by three court-appointed lawyers. The ChGK acts were quoted as evidence of guilt, 22 witnesses were heard, the results of a medical examination on the autopsy of 623 corpses (85 children, 256 women and 282 men, including 198 old people) were read, 523 of them died from gas, 100 from gunshots the head.

Crimes of Nazi invaders in the city of Krasnodar. The bodies of Krasnodar killed by carbon monoxide found in the anti-tank ditch on the outskirts of the city. Photo by I. Ozersky. (TASS) Published in the newspaper Izvestia Soviets of Deputies of the Workers of the USSR, July 14, 1943

Under the load of evidence, all the defendants fully pleaded guilty to complicity with the German invaders, atrocities against the population of Krasnodar and the Krasnodar Territory. The military tribunal sentenced to death by hanging the chief executioners Tishchenko, Rechkalov, Lastovin, Pushkarev, Misan, Naptsok, Kotomtsev and Kladov. The sentence was carried out on July 18 at 13 o’clock in the city square of Krasnodar. The execution was watched by 30 to 50 thousand residents of the city and nearby villages. The sign “Executed for treason against the Motherland” hung on the convicts. Less active accomplices Tuchkov, Pavlov and Paramonov received 20 years of hard labor. The process was covered by writers - Alexey Tolstoy, Elena Kononenko (they also covered the Kharkov process of 1943) and many correspondents from the Soviet and foreign media (one of them was A. Werth, political observer for the London Radio). The newsreel worked - the documentary film “The Verdict of the People” (directed by I. Setkina) was released on the screens of Krasnodar cinemas on August 31, 1943. Also, according to the results, a brochure was published, it was actively read for the population by agitators in the rear and political workers in the army. The materials of the process were translated into foreign languages. The importance of the process was that it identified the names of the specific culprits, both convicted and wanted. The newspaper Pravda wrote on July 20, 1943: "The German monsters fled, but in the dock in this process was the whole bloody Hitler system."

Crimes of Nazi invaders in the city of Krasnodar. In the picture: the corpses of Soviet citizens killed by Nazi aggressors by carbon monoxide, dug for forensic examination from an anti-tank ditch on the territory of state farm No. 1 in the vicinity of Krasnodar. Published in the newspaper Izvestia Soviets of Deputies of the Workers of the USSR, July 15, 1943

After July 18, 1943, eight accomplices of Hitler's war criminals were publicly hanged in Krasnodar, a huge number of letters were sent to the tribunal of the North Caucasian Front from both individual citizens and entire collectives of workers supporting a fair court decision. In 1945-1946, the documents of the Krasnodar process on "gas chamber" were used by the international tribunal in Nuremberg. In 1963, they were again involved in Krasnodar, where nine other members of the SS-10-A sonderkommando were openly tried. And after 37 years, the materials of the Krasnodar process on “gas chambers” helped to punish the chief of the SS-10-a sonderkommand Kurt Christman. In 1979, he was arrested by the German police for the murder of 105 Krasnodar citizens in 1942-1943. In 1980, a trial began in Munich, where it was proved by the materials of the Krasnodar trial of 1943 that Christman had used "murderers" for executions. The offender was sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died in 1987.

From the memoirs of the colonel of justice ... People have not yet managed to get rid of the terrible nightmare that they had to endure. They only talked about the gas chamber, ravines filled with corpses of people, the executions of children ... First, the gas chamber appeared on the streets of the city on Fridays, and then cruised every day. Especially often she was seen before the Nazis fleeing from Krasnodar in January 1943. The death machine hurried to the outskirts of the city and stopped at the edge of the anti-tank ditch. Doors opened automatically, a bluish haze from inside. Having thrown dozens of corpses of people to the ground, the Nazis threw them into the ditch, quickly sprinkled them with earth, and the gas chamber again raced for the next batch of suicide bombers. ... On July 14, 1943, in Velikan cinema, in Krasnodar, a trial was opened over the participants in the atrocious atrocities in the Soviet Kuban ... The first to give explanations to V. Tishchenko ... Tischenko told the court in detail about the essence and purpose of the Nazi murderers. It was a car with a carrying capacity of up to 8 tons, with double walls and fake windows, giving them the appearance of a bus. There was a hermetically closing door in the rear wall of the body. A grille was made inside the body, and a pipe passed under it through which exhaust gas flowed from the diesel engine to the body. When the engine was running, when the car stood still, the people in it died in 6–7 minutes, and if the gas chamber was in motion, after 9–10 minutes. The prisoners knew that death was awaiting them in this car. Therefore, they resisted in every possible way, and when landing they shouted and called for help. The Gestapo men, with the participation of Tishchenko and other defendants, forced their victims into the gas chamber. The landing of the people was usually led by the Gestapo chief Colonel Christman, Captain Rabbe, and other Nazi officers. Tishchenko told the court how, once, 67 people of adults and 18 children from one to five years old were driven into the gas chamber with his active participation: “First, the women were put into the car, and then their children started throwing firewood,” Tishchenko showed. - If one of the mothers was protecting the child, she was immediately beaten half to death. One boy, when dragged into a gas chamber, bit the Gestapo’s hand. Another fascist killed this boy by hitting him on the head with his butt. ... To the question of the chairman of the court why he found him in the service of the Nazis, Rechkalov cynically answered: - I was looking for easier work, but more money ... He showed at the court that he had accompanied the death machine several times to the anti-tank ditch.

The atrocities of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices in the city of Krasnodar and the Krasnodar Territory. On the pictures: 1. The Gestapo building in the city of Krasnodar, which the Nazis set on fire before they escaped from the city, after having mined it. When the building was set on fire, about 300 arrested Gestapo Soviet citizens died in it. 2 and 3. Burnt corpses of Soviet citizens. (TASS newsreel).

Witnesses Korolchuk and Talashchenko lived not far from the dump site of those killed. The gas chamber went to the moat past the windows of their house. Once a car was stuck in the mud. Then the Nazis and their henchmen, accompanying the car on horseback, began to unload the corpses from the car to the carts and take them to the moat. Witness Archpriest George Church of Krasnodar Ilyashev testified: - On the second day after the Germans escaped from Krasnodar, I was invited to perform a funeral rite in the family of the photographer Lugansk. The corpse of their only son, killed by the Nazis, has just been brought. I could not perform the ceremony, tears were uncontrollably rolling out of my eyes, I was thinking about Russian people who had died innocently in their native land at the hands of German monsters. My neighbor Raisa Ivanovna also died from their cursed hands. The Germans strangled her with some poisonous substance. Everything that the Nazis did here finally convinced me of who they were. I testify to the whole world, to the whole Russian people, that these are wild animals, and I do not have words that would express all the hatred and curse to these monsters. They listened with great emotion to the testimony of witness Kozelsky, a doctor at the Krasnodar City Hospital, who was present at the trial. He said that in the early days of the occupation, a German doctor came to their hospital, or simply put it, the Gestapo executioner Hertz. He asked how many patients and who they are. On August 22, the clatter of forged boots was heard in the corridors of the hospital. By order of Hertz, all the hospital staff gathered in the office of the head physician. Hertz removed the revolver from his belt, laid it on the table and in broken Russian asked: “Are there Communists, Komsomol members, Jews?” Hearing that there were no Communists and Jews among the doctors, Herz continued: “I am a German officer, I was ordered to remove the sick from here. The German command ordered that there were no patients during the war. All. I'm getting down to business. ” Going out into the courtyard, Kozelsky saw that while Hertz was collecting the employees of the hospital, loading into the gas chamber had already begun. At first, patients did not know what was the matter. They were told that they were being transported to another hospital, but then they understood everything. The car was loaded to failure. After a while, she returned back for a new party. ...

 Kotov testifies, who was thrown by the Nazis into the gas chamber and was saved only thanks to his resourcefulness and composure. On August 22, 1942, Kotov came for a certificate to the third city hospital, where he was previously cured. When he entered the courtyard, the first thing that caught his eye was a large car with a dark gray body. He did not even have time to take two steps, as some Nazi grabbed him by the collar and pushed him into a crowded body. The door slammed shut. Kotov felt the car set off. A few minutes later he became ill, he began to lose consciousness. At one time, Kotov studied at the PVC courses and immediately realized what was the matter - they poisoned him with some kind of gas. He tore his shirt, wetted it with urine and put it on his nose and mouth. It became easier to breathe, but nevertheless lost consciousness. He woke up in a pit among hundreds of corpses. Somehow I got out and crawled home with great difficulty.

Witness Inozemtseva, an employee of the regional children's hospital, spoke about the atrocious extermination of Soviet children by the Nazi occupiers. In this hospital, 42 children were cured. But the murderer has come here too. On September 13, 1942, a group of German officers arrived at the hospital: Erich Meyer, Jacob Aiks and others. They stayed for several days in the hospital, snooping around all the wards, monitoring children and medical staff. On September 23, when she went on duty, the witness saw a large dark gray car in the courtyard that looked like a freight car. The high German asked how many children are in the hospital and who they are by nationality. It turned out to be a "doctor", an officer of the German Gestapo Hertz, one of the most fierce sadists and Gestapo executioners. The soldiers who arrived with him, on his orders, began to load the children in the car. They were not allowed to dress, although they told hospital employees that they were taking children to Stavropol. Children were only in shorts and T-shirts. They resisted, prayed for help, for protection, clung their little hands to the orderlies and doctors. The fascist Hertz smiled at them, amusingly moving his mustache. And then the gas chamber door slammed shut, the engine started. The car started off, and hot gas went through the hoses. Children, panting, pounded the wall of the gas chamber. Behind her was a passenger car in which the Gestapo sat. After 20-25 minutes, they returned and began to drink. “I will never forget,” Inozemtseva said, “like little children, among them there were one-year-olds, crying, shouting, instinctively feeling that something unkind, scary was being raised over them. After the expulsion of the Nazi occupiers from Krasnodar, the places of burial of children were opened. The eyes seemed to be literally a mess of children's corpses in T-shirts and shorts, which were stamped by the regional children's hospital. The tribunal attached some of these things to the case as material evidence.

Source: Mayorov N. Krasnodar process // Inevitable retaliation: based on the materials of the trials of traitors, fascist executioners and agents of imperialist intelligence. 2nd ed., Ext. M .; Military Publishing House, 1979

Crimes of Nazi invaders in the city of Krasnodar. The corpses of children and the corpses of a mother and child killed by Hitler’s executioners with carbon monoxide.

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