The Latvian city of Jelgava (Mitava), destroyed by the German invaders. 1945 Archival photoMOSCOW, June 20 — RIA Novosti.During the Great Patriotic War, Latvian punishers voluntarily and willingly helped the Nazis mass shoot and kill innocent Jews from among civilians not only in the USSR, but also in other countries, including France, Poland, Germany, Austria , Romania, this is evidenced by archival documents published by the FSB of Russia. The materials were published on the website of the special services on the eve of the 81st anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War. sad fact: the Nazi ideology is alive, and its bearers crave revenge.The result of the creeping nazification of the political elites of European states was the ban on the symbols of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the criminal prosecution of citizens for trying to pay tribute to the memory of those who, at the cost of their lives, saved entire nations from destruction by Nazi Germany and its allies, and goofy Russophobia is a modern form of Nazism, declared the «mainstream» of anti-Russian policy,» the FSB states.The FSB spoke about the use of the experience of the war of 1812 against the Nazis. The descendants of the Nazis, accomplices of war criminals, whose terrible atrocities against the civilian population were recognized as crimes against humanity by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, are against the descendants of the victors, the secret service notes. One of the countries that have been actively reviving Nazism over the past three decades has been Latvia, whose leadership honors the «veterans» of the Latvian SS Legion and other criminal armed groups of collaborators who hold their annual parades, and at the same time forbids citizens from celebrating May 9 Victory Day. Fighting against the historical truth, the Saeima of the Republic of Latvia decided to demolish the monument to the Liberators of Riga and other similar monuments on the territory of the country by November 15, 2022. recall what kind of “heroes” are glorified as an example for the younger generation in the modern Baltic states,” the secret service emphasizes. question» — that is, in the massacres of Jews, coupled with robberies, bullying and outright sadism towards the victims. The first subdivision of the Latvian chastisers-volunteers was the «Arajs team», which began its journey with the pogrom of the Riga synagogues. The unit commander Viktor Arais received the title of SS Sturmbannfuehrer in 1942 for services to the invaders. In total, his subordinates killed at least 30 thousand civilians. During and after the war, 344 employees of the «team» were detained by the Soviet state security agencies and put on trial in the USSR. Their leader Arais was sentenced in Germany to life imprisonment in 1979 and died in prison. Another well-known accomplice in the crimes of the «team» Herbert Cukurs in 1965 was liquidated in Uruguay by the Israeli special services. The search for war criminals guilty of atrocities against the civilian population was one of the priority tasks of the Soviet military counterintelligence SMERSH, and it began already in conditions of hostilities for the liberation of the Baltic states. The captured punishers tried in every possible way to deny their guilt in monstrous crimes, but under the pressure of irrefutable evidence (testimony of colleagues and miraculously surviving witnesses) they were forced to confess. , was the platoon commander of the machine gun company of the «Arajs team» SS Untersturmführer Talivaldis Ozols, a photocopy of the interrogation protocol has now been published.The Ministry of Defense published documents on the release of Nikolaev in 1944 «Babies were also shot …» During interrogation at SMERSH in December 1944, Ozols admitted that at one time he had voluntarily entered the service of the Nazi police, and in March 1942 he ended up in » Arais team. Ozols told how in April 1942, with his platoon, he went five or six times to the Bikernieki forest in the eastern part of Riga, where he participated in the extermination of the civilian population, mainly Jews. Latvian accomplices (the main perpetrator is the «Arajs team») mass executions, the victims of which, according to the Soviet Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, were a total of 46.5 thousand civilians, including 12 thousand Jews specially delivered for the death penalty to the territory of Latvia from Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia. According to Ozols, with his participation in April 1942, at least seven thousand people were shot in the forest. «They brought old men, women, teenagers, and even women who had breasts children,” Ozols said. People were brought from the Riga prison, as well as from the ghetto, where only Jews were kept, he explained. nal Ozols, he and his platoon came early in the morning to the Bikernieki forest and placed policemen so that the people who were brought to be executed could not escape. The former punisher also admitted that his participation in the extermination of the civilian population in Bikernieki Forest «consisted in the fact that I, as an officer, sent my policemen directly to the place of execution.» There, they unloaded the doomed from the cars, and then dumped the bodies into pits and buried them with earth.The FSB published documents on the heroism of Smersh agents behind the front. It is noted that in May 1942, Ozols twice took part in the executions of Soviet citizens in the Bikernieki forest. Then 1,500 people were shot there. «Moreover, 300 of them were Soviet citizens who were brought to be shot from a hospital for the mentally ill. Among them were also old men, women and small children,» Ozols said. A month later, Ozols and his subordinates were already operating in area of the city of Slonim in the west of Belarus. According to him, on June 30, 1942, they delivered over three thousand Jewish civilians from the Slonim ghetto for execution, “among them there were many women with babies.” “Babies were also shot,” Ozols testified. the Latvian battalion of Schutzmanns, which was engaged in the extermination of the civilian population there for a whole month,» he said. By that time, Ozols was already in Minsk. There, during July 1942, he «participated four or five times in the extermination of the civilian population, more than ten thousand people were exterminated.» «We took people from the ghetto in the city of Minsk for execution, and these were Jews, and the last party that were delivered by us to the place of execution, there were Jews brought specially by the Germans from Austria. My policemen also took a direct part in the extermination of these peaceful citizens,» Ozols admitted. in the forest». Women with babies were also shot there.The FSB disclosed documents on Japan's preparations for an attack on the USSR. In the temporarily occupied territory of the USSR, it occupied the second place in terms of the number of prisoners, after the Lviv ghetto. According to historians, about 120 thousand people passed through the Minsk ghetto, of which more than 105 thousand died at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices. These executions were entrusted to me personally, to which I received an order on this issue from the head of the Baranovichi SD (Hitler's security service. — Ed.), Untersturmführer Amelung,» Ozols said. Then they used a new method. «The difference was that that if the executions of previous citizens were carried out in such a way that a person was placed on the surface of the pit before the execution, then in this case the pits were dug in such a way that on the one hand a passage was dug through which people, entering, fell directly to the depth of the dug pit, and my police officers stood at the edge of the pit on the surface and shot civilians in this way, «Ozols recalled.» We drove people into the pit through the passage one temporarily eight to ten people and, as a rule, for each person who was shot, we put one policeman upstairs,» he said. Those unfortunates who were still alive were not finished off by the punishers, but buried alive.Even during the Second World War, the Banderaites spread fakes about the Red Army. The cycle of «gas chambers» It is reported that the Nazis actively used «gas chambers» for the mass destruction of civilians, and improvised Latvians helped them without fail. Ozols admitted that one day at the very beginning of August 1942, in the Belarusian city of Baranovichi, he also participated in these crimes. «There were two teams of us, my team and I received the arrested people who were delivered to us from the station. We stood outside the city not far from We loaded the people who arrived to us into «gas chambers» and sent them to another team, which was about two kilometers from us in the forest,» Ozols said. cars, and they again came to the Ozols brigade to load the next batch of the doomed. «I must say that when civilians were brought to me from the station to carry out these wild reprisals against them, the Germans made a selection of specialists from them — locksmiths, tailors and other professions. The latter were told that they would allegedly be taken by car to the city, where each would be used according to their specialty, (others) were told that they would allegedly be taken to the agricultural economic work,” Ozols recalled. “Thus, the people I loaded into the “gas chamber” hoped that they would be given work. I loaded 80 people into one gas chamber and 60 people into another,” he added.»Germans, you were deceived.» New facts about the battle of Stalingrad have been declassified. Other former punishers caught by the Soviet state security authorities also told how «gas chambers» were used to execute prisoners of the Minsk ghetto. about five. I personally participated in the expulsion from houses, and also pushed the Jews into the «gas chambers». Gas cars continuously left after being loaded into the forest and returned back for new batches, «- this is how the participant told about the events of one of the days at the end of July 1942 «Teams of Arajs» Indriks Krumins. According to him, «a terrible picture was created inside the ghetto, Jews were shot for fun, robbed.» “On this day, the operation was carried out before sunset, and approximately ten thousand Soviet citizens were killed. The slaughtered were taken 20 kilometers from Minsk to the forest, where they were buried in pre-prepared pits two meters deep, four wide and about 30 meters long,” — Krumins recalled. It is noted that the next day everything happened again. «Moreover, by 12 o'clock in the afternoon in this part of the ghetto, almost all Jews were killed and taken away … After that, we moved to the second part of the ghetto, located here across the road and began to do that about 10,000 people were also killed in gas chambers that day,» he said.The Russian Ministry of Defense showed new facts of the atrocities of Bandera in the 1940s A woman in labor, killed by gas, Krumins also told how a year later, in July 1943, with a group of Latvian punishers Mikhelson, Zeldis and Dubrovskis, they went to a village a few tens of kilometers from Minsk to participate in raid on the partisans, who in the end were not found. Then the punishers «arrested six partisan families, they drove them all into the» gas chamber. «At this time, a pregnant woman came out of the house, who was on the eve of childbirth, and asked for help. Under the pretext of taking her to the hospital, the woman was also put in a «gas chamber». All these Soviet citizens were gassed in the same way. After that, we went to the forest and buried the dead in the pit,» he said. security services «for punitive activities in Belarus». According to him, around November 1942, Jews from France, Romania, Poland, Germany, Austria and other European countries began to arrive in the occupied capital of Soviet Belarus. «They were brought in whole echelons. Among them were women, children and old people,» Konrads recalled.The RVIO urged not to belittle the feat of the Panfilovites because of their real number «I personally participated in the landing of Jews from the train onto trucks, accompanied them to the location of the gas chamber and forcibly drove them into the back of the chamber,» he admitted. According to Konrads, many refused sit in the «gas chamber», and then the punishers used force. «I acted with the butt of a rifle, and the Germans beat them with special whips. Having filled the gas chamber with 50-60 people, among whom were women, children and the elderly, we hermetically closed the door and started up in action engine,” he said. According to him, after 10-15 minutes, the unfortunate people died. “We, with the help of a special team from those arrested, dumped them into prepared ditches. The ditches filled with corpses were then covered with earth, and those arrested, attracted to this work, they were shot,” Konrads testified, adding that “this mass extermination of Jews lasted about two months, until severe frosts set in.” In the documents published now, with there are other details showing the appearance of the Latvian punishers.The Ministry of Defense revealed how Field Marshal Paulus assessed the Red Army. «, — he said. Conrads did exactly the same. «During the execution of the Jews, I robbed their property. I took suits, money, gold, watches and other valuables that I sold, and drank the proceeds,» he admitted. Konrads spoke about a certain Jansons from among the active punishers who committed crimes in Belarus. «In early 1943, Jansons was arrested for the rape of a German woman and sent to a Riga prison. Soon he was released, worked at the main headquarters of the SD in Riga as an interpreter from German language. Later he was arrested again in a similar case,» he recalled. alo archival documents about the liberation of Lithuania
