During the Great Patriotic War, in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Nazis and their henchmen from among local traitors committed many war crimes against civilians and captured military personnel.
What happened then with the local policemen, who agreed to serve the Nazis?
Since the war-ravaged country was in need of workers' hands, the death penalty was applied only to the most notorious and odious executioners. Many police officers served their time and returned home in the 1950s and 1960s. But some of the collaborators managed to avoid arrest by posing as civilians or even ascribing heroic biographies of participants in the Great Patriotic War as part of the Red Army.
The Great Patriotic War had not yet ended, and in the territories liberated from the Germans, trials began over the policemen and other accomplices of the occupation authorities. Most were convicted under Article 58 of the USSR Criminal Code and received various sentences in colonies. Those who went to the service as policemen wore a white bandage on their sleeves.
And these are those whom many still regret. Prisoners sentenced under Article 58 were called "political" in comparison with ordinary criminals ("criminals", "domestic workers"). After their release, the prisoners had no right to settle closer than 100 km from large cities (within the time frame specified by the court).
As the investigators who dealt with these cases recall, immediately after the war the country was in great need of working hands, it was necessary to restore the national economy, so it was recommended not to apply the death penalty. After serving, these people left the places of detention, some even under the amnesty ahead of schedule, and returned to their homes. There were those who managed to escape justice for a long time, hiding their past. How did these people live in the USSR?
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One of the first trials of Hitler's war criminals took place on July 14-17, 1943 in Krasnodar. The Great Patriotic War was still in full swing, and the trial of eleven Nazi accomplices from the SS Sonderkommando 10-a was underway at the Velikan cinema in Krasnodar. More than 7 thousand civilians of Krasnodar and Krasnodar Territory were killed in gas chambers - "gas vans". The direct leaders of the massacre were officers of the German Gestapo, but the executioners from among the local traitors carried out the executions.
Vasily Petrovich Tishchenko, born in 1914, joined the occupation police in August 1942, then became the sergeant major of the SS Sonderkommando 10-a, and later an investigator for the Gestapo. Nikolai Semenovich Pushkarev, born in 1915, served as a squad leader in the Sonderkommando, Ivan Anisimovich Rechkalov, born in 1911, evaded mobilization in the Red Army and after the entry of German troops joined the Sonderkommando. Grigory Nikitich Misan, born in 1916, was also a volunteer policeman, like the previously convicted Ivan Fedorovich Kotomtsev, born in 1918. Yunus Mitsukhovich Naptsok, born in 1914, took part in the torture and execution of Soviet citizens; Ignatiy Fedorovich Kladov, born in 1911; Mikhail Pavlovich Lastovina, born in 1883; Grigory Petrovich Tuchkov, born in 1909; Vasily Stepanovich Pavlov, born in 1914; Ivan Ivanovich Paramonov, born in 1923 The trial was quick and fair. On July 17, 1943, Tishchenko, Rechkalov, Pushkarev, Naptsok, Misan, Kotomtsev, Kladov and Lastovina were sentenced to capital punishment and on July 18, 1943, they were hanged in the central square of Krasnodar. Paramonov, Tuchkov and Pavlov received 20 years in prison.
However, other members of the "10-a" Sonderkommando managed to escape punishment. Twenty years passed before a new trial took place in Krasnodar in the fall of 1963 over Hitler's henchmen - the executioners who killed Soviet people. Nine people appeared before the court - former policemen Alois Veikh, Valentin Skripkin, Mikhail Eskov, Andrey Sukhov, Valerian Surguladze, Nikolai Zhirukhin, Emelyan Buglak, Uruzbek Dzampaev, Nikolai Psarev. All of them took part in the massacres of civilians on the territory of the Rostov Region, Krasnodar Territory, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Valentin Skripkin lived in Taganrog before the war, was a promising footballer, and with the beginning of the German occupation he signed up as a policeman. He went into hiding until 1956, before the amnesty, and then legalized, worked at a bakery. It took six years of painstaking work for the Chekists to establish: Skripkin personally participated in many murders of Soviet people, including the terrible massacre in Zmievskaya Balka in Rostov-on-Don.
Mikhail Eskov was a Black Sea sailor, a participant in the defense of Sevastopol. Two sailors in a trench on Sandy Bay stood against German tankettes. One sailor died and was buried in a mass grave, forever remaining a hero. Eskov was concussed. So he got to the Germans, and then out of despair he entered the service in a platoon of the Sonderkommando and became a war criminal. In 1943, he was arrested for the first time - for serving in German auxiliary units, he was given ten years. In 1953, Eskov freed himself in order to sit down again in 1963.
Nikolai Zhirukhin has worked since 1959 as a labor teacher in one of the schools of Novorossiysk, in 1962 he graduated from the third year of the Pedagogical Institute in absentia. He “split” out of his own stupidity, believing that after the 1956 amnesty he would not be held responsible for serving the Germans. Before the war, Zhirukhin worked in the fire brigade, then he was mobilized from 1940 to 1942. served as a clerk of the garrison guardhouse in Novorossiysk, and during the German offensive he defected to the side of the Nazis. Andrey Sukhov, formerly a veterinary paramedic. In 1943 he lagged behind the Germans in the Tsimlyansk region. He was detained by the Red Army, but Sukhov was sent to the penal battalion, then he was reinstated in the rank of senior lieutenant of the Red Army, reached Berlin and after the war he lived quietly as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, worked in the paramilitary security in Rostov-on-Don.
After the war, Alexander Veikh worked in the Kemerovo region as a sawmill at the timber industry. A neat and disciplined worker was even chosen in the local area. But one thing surprised his colleagues and fellow villagers - for eighteen years he had never left the village. Valerian Surguladze was arrested right on the day of his own wedding. A graduate of a sabotage school, a soldier of the Sonderkommando "10-a" and a platoon commander of the SD, Surguladze was responsible for the deaths of many Soviet citizens.
Dear people
As a rule, former policemen posed as participants in the war. For example, Pavel Testov swore allegiance to Hitler's Germany in 1943 and served in a detachment that was engaged in hunting partisans. He performed his "feats" in the Novgorod region. Residents of several villages in the Batetsky district were hiding in the forest from being hijacked to Germany. It was there that Testov and his squadron found them. They shot several dozen people, and tore two girls to pieces, tied them by their legs to bent trees. After the war, this man moved to another region, where no one knew him, presented himself as a war veteran and even had medals "For Victory over Germany" and "20 Years of Victory".
Oleksiy Mayboroda, a policeman from the Kharkiv region, settled in the Donetsk region after the war. He changed his name, patronymic and year of birth. He was repeatedly awarded for rationalization proposals, had an honorary donor badge, donated 3-4 liters of blood every year. He got married and raised children. They managed to take him only due to the fact that he was identified by witnesses of the atrocities he committed during the war years.
Pavel Aleksashkin commanded a punitive detachment in Belarus. After the war, he managed to get off with a short term for serving the Germans, Aleksashkin managed to hide from the investigation the true nature of his service. After serving, he moved to the Yaroslavl region, where he posed as a war veteran, received all the awards and benefits that veterans were entitled to, and even spoke to children in schools, telling about his battle path. The truth came to light when the authorities needed Aleksashkin's testimony in the case of one of the Nazi criminals. We made an inquiry at the place of residence and, with great surprise, learned that a collaborator who had served time for serving the Germans was posing as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War.
By cities and towns
Former accomplices of the fascists, even if they managed to avoid punishment, rarely felt completely calm. As a rule, they changed their place of residence, traveling around the country and hiding from justice. For example, Sklyar, the head of the secret military police of the Bogodukhovsky district of the Kharkov region, was found years later in Altai. He changed his last name, grew a huge beard. A famous artist, who was captivated by his colorful, real Siberian appearance, even painted a portrait from him. Nobody would say looking at this venerable old man that during the war years he hung people, carved stars on the chests of partisans. One Ukrainian policeman named Bubelo was found after the war in Volyn. He unlocked it for a long time, despite the fact that he was identified by witnesses. He gave himself away as follows:when, in the presence of Bubelo, one of the common graves of the Jews executed under the leadership of Bubelo was exhumed, a skull with a long braid and a ribbon was raised. Seeing this, the policeman fell to his knees and cried out: "My Zosya, Zosya!" It turns out that he was in love with a Jewish girl who was also shot. Another former punisher Mikhail Ivanov, originally from the Starorussky district. He was surrounded, and after being captured, he agreed to help the invaders. He returned to his village and became a sergeant, then joined the punitive battalion. On his conscience are dozens of executed partisans and civilians. After the war, he hid for a long time, moving from city to city, lived in the Minsk region, in Leninabad, in Chelyabinsk, in the Arkhangelsk region. Everywhere he pretended to be a participant in the Great Patriotic War.
The story of the famous "Tonka-machine-gunner" - Antonina Makarova, who during the war years served the Germans in the Bryansk region, shooting prisoners of war with a machine gun, is very indicative. When our troops approached, Antonina Makarova managed to escape from the places where she committed her atrocities and pretend to be an ordinary inhabitant of the occupied territory. She even began to serve as a nurse in the hospital, where a young soldier fell in love with her. Having married, Antonina changed her last name to Ginsburg, and 30 lived, enjoying the honor and universal respect, as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. The trial of Makarova in 1978 was the last major trial in the case of a traitor to the Motherland in the USSR, and the only one - over a woman punisher.
In the fall of 1988, Alexander Posevin was shot. This was the last trial of the Kharkiv policemen. As historian Valery Vokhmyanin notes, some criminals are still being searched for.
- The first in the newly liberated territory were the employees of the special department, which would later be called SMERSH, searched for the Nazis and their accomplices, - Valery Konstantinovich recalled. - Later the work was continued by the investigators of the NKVD. And now, the SBU archive contains unfinished cases that were open at that time. This happened when the suspect was either not found, or it was established that he lives in countries with which the USSR did not have agreements on the extradition of criminals: the USA, Brazil, Argentina …
So, Walter Rauch, the creator of gas vans (gas gas chambers on wheels), which were first tested in 1942 on the streets of Kharkov, fled to Chile and there became an adviser to the dictator Augusto Pinochet.
By the way, some researchers emphasize: among the monsters and sadists who helped the Nazis in the executions, there were simply cowardly people. After all, often no one asked the peasant if he wanted to serve in the police. There were usually two options: either you put on a white bandage, or you get a bullet in the forehead.