In August 1937, artists of the drama club of the Leningrad Society of the Deaf and Dumb prepared for the anniversary of the October Revolution a performance based on Ostrovsky's play How the Steel Was Tempered. In the midst of the dress rehearsal, strangers entered the hall, detaining the director without explanation. Soon the disabled were accused of participating in a fascist organization. 54 people were involved in the "case of the deaf and dumb". After ruthless interrogation with torture, 35 disabled people were shot. This fact has become one of the most absurd pages of the epic of the Great Terror.
Arrests of the elite of the first theater of the deaf and dumb in the Union
In the 20s of the last century, the House of Education for the Deaf and Mute on the site of the former palace of Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich on the Leningrad embankment in Leningrad was the center of the cultural and social life of the disabled. All kinds of circles, sections, a cinema, a library and courses for working youth functioned here. It was here that the first theater of the deaf and dumb in the Union appeared, led by the deaf-mute director Mikhail Semyonovich Tager-Karyelli.
The authorities carried out searches in the theater of the deaf and dumb.
In the summer of 1937, he was suddenly detained right in the theater by unknown men in civilian clothes. The agitated actors immediately realized that something terrible had happened. A few days later, searches began in the theater - even sports foils were seized from theatrical props as prohibited cold steel. Then they took up the artists' houses. In the building of the NKVD on Liteiny, they were interrogated through sign language interpreters, who, out of fear, kept silent, observing the discrepancy between what was stated in the protocols and what the arrested said. So in Leningrad the case of deaf and dumb terrorists was unleashed.
Trade in postcards depicting Hitler
Promotional video:
For several months, up to fifty people were arrested. All of them became victims of denunciation by the head of the department of the All-Russian Society of the Deaf and Mute, Eric Totmianin. Eric Mikhailovich was a famous person in the city. Until now, he has done a lot for the disabled. But after receiving information about the sale of ward postcards at the station, he regarded it as speculation and immediately reported. Such were the times - in case of proceedings, he would have stood up to the wall first.
Erik Totmianin, according to whose alleged denunciation the "case of the deaf and dumb" was fabricated. Shot.
All those arrested were accused of forming a fascist terrorist organization directly connected with the city's German consulate and preparing terrorist attacks against party leaders.
The speculative trade in handicraft illustrated products at train stations and on trains has become a convenient pretext for promoting a large-scale business. Krause, the head of the OBKHSS from the police department, immediately realized that this would be able to inflate a high-profile political case, currying favor with the authorities. One of the detained cards with the image of Hitler himself, accidentally found in the apartment, played into the hands. Moreover, they got to him through the German political emigrant Albert Blum, who lived next door.
These were just standard investments in German cigarette packages that Blum had brought. He was declared a Gestapo resident, and all his acquaintances were members of an underground group. Among them were outstanding art workers, educators, industry leaders, winners of the All-Russian Olympics among the deaf and dumb.
Cruel interrogations and tears of sign language interpreters
The intractable deaf and dumb were forced to sign documents convenient for policemen by torture, while the testimony in the protocols was completely implausible. For example, the number of found portraits of Adolf Hitler in the protocols has grown to 1400 pieces. And one disabled photographer Nissenbaum was forced to "confess" to the preparation of the murder of Joseph Stalin himself.
Investigators were in a hurry to quickly close the case.
Deaf and dumb actors.
The sign language interpreters serving the interrogations did not leave the offices for 10 hours, barely enduring the observed bullying of the disabled. When they began to cry, they were revived by the basements of the Big House.
By the way, if this happened two years later, after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the friendship on paper between the USSR and Nazi Germany, everything would have turned out differently. Those arrested, most likely, would have gotten off with minimal terms, if not a slight fright. But in 1937 life went on according to the instructions of the existing order for arrests and liquidation of "enemies of the people", which the security officials hurried to successfully execute.
35 shootings and punishment of the manufacturers of the case
As a result of the "unbiased investigation" 34 people were sentenced to death, and ironically, the informer Erik Totmianin was among them. Although, according to the assumptions of the historian A. Razumov, the head's message about speculation among the deaf and dumb could also be fabricated by the investigators. The remaining 19 detainees went to the camps of Karaganda and Mordovia for ten years.
Monument to the executed deaf and dumb.
Krause, who set the stage for this case, did not greatly survive the deaf-and-dumb shot through his fault, and did not wait for the desired promotion. In 1939, after Nikolai Yezhov was replaced as head of the NKVD by Lavrenty Beria, a case was brought up against Krause along with his subordinates. In 1940, they were accused of falsification in the course of operational and investigative activities and inconsistency with socialist legality. In the same year, the repressed invalids were returned from the camps, and all those executed were rehabilitated in 1955.
In the Levashovskaya Wasteland, at the burial place of the dead, memorial plaques were installed, and in 2008 a cenotaph appeared there in the form of palms with spread fingers, which in sign language is interpreted as a request for help. Years later, one of the deaf and dumb who returned from the camp, Samuel Abramzon. And another person involved in the case, Georgy Gvozdev, said that he signed all the false confessions after a strong blow to the back of the head with a pistol handle.
