The FSB declassified data on Nazi crimes against Soviet prisoners of war

The Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia has declassified some of the very first documents indicating the inhumane treatment of Nazi soldiers by captured Soviet servicemen on the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The relevant materials were published on the agency's website.

The digitized copy of the document states that during the transfer of thousands of prisoners from the town of Khorol, located on the territory of Ukraine to a sugar factory located in the village of Semenovka, Soviet soldiers were forced to run without stopping or rest. At the same time, those who could not, as well as those who fell or lagged behind, were shot.

Upon the prisoners' arrival in the village of Semenovka, the Nazis did not provide them with food, which is why up to 70 people died of hunger per day. In the same place, as well as in Karpovka, Poltava region, prisoners were kept in the open air in any weather.

The document also reported that wounded Red Army soldiers who had not had time to evacuate remained at Greigovo station, who were starved by the Nazis and were not allowed to do bandages. On the territory of this area, as the peasants reported, 135 people were shot on August 17, 1941.

"On August 17 (1941 — Ed.), the Germans shot 135 people, after mockingly torturing commanders and political workers, torturing them: they cut off their hands, cut off their ears, put out their eyes, and then shot them," the data says.

On June 4, the FSB released documents about the crimes of the Nazis in Gorlovka during the Great Patriotic War. The German invaders, retreating from this area in 1943, destroyed everything they could not take with them: machine-building, mercury and chemical plants, as well as cultural institutions and power plants.