More than 800 mentally ill people were killed by the Nazis near Leningrad.

The FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region declassified the materials of the criminal case on the mass murder of patients at the Kashchenko Psychiatric Hospital in November 1941.

"Seven hospital employees and another local accomplice, on the instructions of the German command <...>, voluntarily agreed to participate in poisoning mentally ill people by lethal injection," the FSB press service quoted TASS as saying.

According to the case file, in August 1941, German troops seized the Sivoritsy estate, where the hospital was located, looted it and housed 1.3 thousand patients in a building designed for 200 people. Unsanitary conditions were created for the mentally ill, they starved them, reducing the daily allowance of bread to 100 grams, and from October 1941 they stopped providing food altogether.

On November 20, 1941, on the instructions of the German command, the staff of the institution and their local accomplice staged a massacre — they gave about 850 lethal injections to patients.

"According to forensic expert Andrey Vladimirsky, the victims could have been poisoned with a combined drug based on morphine and heavy metal salts," the materials specify.

In 1943, the Nazis attempted to hide the traces of the crime: the remains were exhumed and burned by captured Red Army soldiers, who were then burned alive in a barn. The court sentenced seven of the direct perpetrators to death, and two nurses to 10 years in camps. Historians note that the exact number of victims and their names are still being determined; among those killed were both elderly people and teenagers aged 12-17.

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