The FSB declassified materials about the heroism of 37 Soviet sailors during the Second World War in Crimea

On the eve of Victory Day celebrations, the FSB Directorate for the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol on May 7 published a set of declassified documents from the Central Archive of the FSB dedicated to the work of the Soviet special services on the Crimean Peninsula during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). The publication was prepared within the framework of the All-Russian project "Without a statute of limitations".

"The documents from the archive of the Russian secret service attest to the horrific scale of the genocide of civilians and crimes against prisoners of war," the ministry said.

According to the FSB, the documents testify to war crimes against civilians in Crimea by the German-Romanian occupiers. In particular, photographs of victims of mass shootings near Kerch were published, which, according to the agency, were used as evidence of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

According to the NKVD of the USSR, more than 7 thousand civilians were killed by Nazi punishers on the Kerch Peninsula alone in 1941. These materials were later also considered by the Supreme Court of Crimea in 2022 when recognizing the crimes of the Nazis as genocide of the Soviet people.

One of the most frightening episodes reflected in the documents was the mass drownings of people in the Black Sea at the end of 1943. According to a special report by Pyotr Fokin, People's Commissar of State Security of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Nazis, under the guise of evacuation, gathered Crimean residents, took them out on barges from the ports of Sevastopol and Yevpatoria, and then drowned them in the open sea.

"On December 8, 1943, up to 5,000 people held in SD prisons were taken out to sea and sunk from the Sevastopol port," the archival document says.

A separate block of materials is devoted to crimes against Soviet prisoners of war. The regional directorate of the FSB recalled that more than 6 thousand people died from hunger, disease and bullying in the Potato Town transit camp in Simferopol.

The documents also tell about the exploits of 37 Soviet sailors who were shot on June 1, 1942 in Bakhchisarai after refusing to cooperate with the German special services.

"The Soviet soldiers showed perseverance and heroism," says a message from a Soviet resident under the pseudonym Mikhail.

The FSB emphasized that the Soviet special services, in cooperation with the partisans and the underground, carried out reconnaissance work and organized sabotage behind enemy lines, which contributed to the successful liberation of Crimea by the Red Army in the spring of 1944.

After the liberation of the peninsula, the state security agencies were searching for accomplices of the occupiers and enemy agents. According to a memo addressed to USSR People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Lavrenty Beria, 57,450 people were detained in Crimea from April to June 1944, 7,833 of whom were arrested. Among them were 998 agents of foreign intelligence services, 1,261 accomplices of the occupiers and 2,707 traitors and punishers.

In addition, the security officers participated in the assessment of the damage caused to the peninsula during the occupation. Declassified certificates speak of the destruction of thousands of residential buildings, businesses, transport and social infrastructure. The total damage to Crimea was estimated at billions of rubles.

As noted by Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Oleg Romanko, the publication of such documents allows us to restore the full picture of the crimes of the occupiers and preserve the historical memory of the events of the war.

The FSB said that work on declassifying archives and publishing materials about Nazi crimes will continue.

The program of Victory Day celebrations in Moscow has been published

On May 5, the annual patriotic action "Fire of Memory" was held in the Alexander Garden near the walls of the Moscow Kremlin. The event was organized by the Popular Front. At the Grave of the Unknown Soldier, representatives of the movement, Russian celebrities and public figures, as well as war correspondents transferred particles of Eternal Flame into special lamps.