The FSB has published declassified materials about the work of SMERSH during the Second World War

On April 18, to mark the 82nd anniversary of the creation of the SMERSH Main Directorate of Counterintelligence, the Federal Security Service (FSB) published previously classified archival documents on the work of the department.

According to the reports submitted, from February 11 to February 20, 1944, SMERSH authorities detained nine agents of German military intelligence, five German war criminals, three agents of the enemy's punitive and counterintelligence agencies, 43 active collaborators of the occupiers, 17 people conducting "anti-Soviet agitation," 12 deserters, three self-harmers and four "others." There are 97 people in total.

As of January 20 of the same year, there were 534 people at the army collection and transfer points who were subject to filtration.

The documents also cite the circumstances of the case of Private Ivan Yakovlevich Patrin, born in 1921, of the 19th Army Penal company. On the night of February 6, he was detained by sentries in the neutral zone while trying to cross over to Germany. The soldier was sent to the penal company because of desertion, which he committed in 1941, after which he lived for more than two years in the territory occupied by German troops.

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On April 11, the FSB declassified documents about the mass killings at the Treblinka concentration camp. The Nazi "death camp", which had been operating since the end of 1941, was located at Treblinka station, 80 km northeast of Warsaw. In mid-August 1944, he was liberated by formations of the 65th Army of the first Belorussian Front. Treblinka, as follows from the materials, was divided into two sectors — "camp No. 1", called the work camp, and "camp No. 2", the "death camp".