Sunday 22 June 1941. At dawn, German forces attack the Soviet  Union and begin a war that is fought not   only against soldiers, but also against  civilians. From the very beginning,   mass murder becomes part of German rule in Eastern  Europe. People are arrested, shot, hanged, burned,   or killed in gas vans far behind the front  lines.

 Jews, Communists, and anyone suspected   of resistance are treated as enemies. To carry out  this terror, German units rely on local helpers   who know the towns, the villages, and the people,  and who agree to help kill their own compatriots.  In 1942, as German forces push into southern  Russia, this machinery of terror reaches   cities like Krasnodar. Occupation brings fear,  executions, and mass graves.

 While German soldiers   and police give the orders, Soviet collaborators  help with arrests, guarding prisoners,   and escorting victims to their deaths. When  the Red Army retakes the city in February 1943,   graves are uncovered, witnesses speak and the  truth is exposed. Justice is neither hidden   nor delayed.

 It is made public and those who  helped the Germans murder their own people will   pay for their crimes with their lives. This  moment becomes known as the Krasnodar Trial. The Second World War began on 1 September 1939 and  less than 2 years later on 22 June 1941 Germany   invaded the Soviet Union, its partner in the war  against Poland. The crimes that would later be   prosecuted in the Krasnodar Trial began more than  a year after Operation Barbarossa was launched.

 In   the summer of 1942, German forces advanced deep  into the southern regions of the Soviet Union,   aiming to secure territory and resources  in the Caucasus. On 12 August 1942,   Krasnodar — whose population had already  been reduced to roughly 150,000 by war and   evacuations — fell into German hands.

 The city  came under the control of the German 17th Army,   which was part of the Wehrmacht – the German Armed  Forces and was supported in Krasnodar by the SS,   the Nazi paramilitary unit and the Gestapo, the  Nazi secret police responsible for repression,   arrests, and executions. Communist civil  administration was replaced by German   occupation rule based on fear, racial  ideology, and collective punishment. 

German security forces began mass arrests of the  civilian population almost immediately. Jews were   identified, registered, and seized, often  with the help of local collaborators   who knew the population and could point  them out. Communists, Red Army veterans,   and people suspected of sympathy for partisans  were also detained.

 Others were arrested simply   because they were falsely denounced by neighbours  or happened to be just in the wrong place at the   wrong time. It did not matter what the reason was,  arrest usually meant death or at least torture.  Central to the terror in Krasnodar was the  activity of Einsatzgruppe D, a German mobile   killing unit, tasked with mass murder of the  civilian population behind the front lines.

 Its   subunit Sonderkommando 10a operated in and around  Krasnodar. These units did not act secretly or   sporadically – they carried out killings openly  and repeatedly, often in daylight, sometimes in   public squares or near busy roads, as a deliberate  demonstration of German power over the civilian   population. Victims were marched under guard  to execution sites outside the city.

 Civilians   watched, knowing that silence and cooperation with  the Germans were often the only way to survive.  One of the most common methods of killing by the  Germans in the east, therefore also in Krasnodar,   was mass shooting. Groups of detainees  were taken to ravines, anti-tank ditches,   or pits on the outskirts of the city.

 There they  were ordered to undress, line up at the edge,   and were shot from behind. People fell into the  pits, often still alive, and were covered with   dirt and those who survived the shooting  usually suffocated under the earth. There   was no mercy – pregnant women and children were  killed together with the rest of their families.  Another method used in Krasnodar was hanging.

  Gallows were erected in public places and bodies   were left on display as a warning. Placards  were sometimes hung around the victims’ necks,   accusing them of being partisans or traitors.  These executions were meant to terrorise the   population into obedience and to discourage any  form of resistance. Among the most notorious tools   of murdering in eastern Europe were gas vans,  which were later nicknamed “soul destroyers”.  

These were sealed trucks disguised as  ordinary transport vehicles. Victims   were loaded into the cargo compartment, the  doors were locked, and exhaust fumes were   redirected inside as the vehicle drove to  burial sites. By the time the vans arrived,   everyone inside was dead or dying from  suffocation.

 In Krasnodar, gas vans were   used extensively – even sick children from  hospitals were taken and murdered there.   During the German reign of terror around 7,000  civilians were murdered in and around Krasnodar.  As the German defeat at Stalingrad on 2 February  1943 changed the course of the war and the Red   Army began advancing, the occupation authorities  in Krasnodar intensified the killings.

 Prisoners   were executed to eliminate witnesses of the German  crimes and the Gestapo building was also set on   fire with Soviet prisoners locked inside. As the  Germans knew that they were starting to lose the   war, they tried to hastily cover the mass graves  and destroy documents.

 Collaborators were ordered   to help erase evidence by exhuming bodies and  burning remains. Despite these efforts, the scale   of the crimes could not be hidden, and survivors  continued to speak once German control collapsed.  When Soviet forces retook Krasnodar on 12  February 1943, investigators uncovered, despite   previous German efforts, mass graves containing  hundreds of bodies.

 Medical examinations revealed,   among others, signs of poisoning by exhaust gases.  Survivors confirmed this when they testified about   the gas vans, but also about the executions, and  the role played by local collaborators who guarded   prisoners, escorted victims, and participated  directly in the killings of the civilians.   The material evidence matched the stories, and  the picture that emerged was one of organised   mass murder carried out with routine  efficiency.

 The Soviets decided to   prepare a military tribunal, to punish the  crimes committed in the Krasnodar region.  The trial took place between 14 and 17  July 1943 before the military tribunal   of the North Caucasus Front and its preparations  were overseen by the highest Soviet authorities,   including Stalin himself.

 The trial was given  an almost demonstrative legal formality,   even though the outcome had already been  decided. No new evidence was presented and   both the defendants and witnesses merely repeated  statements made during the previous investigation.  Those brought before the judges were not Germans,  but ethnic Russians from rural backgrounds. Most   were between 25 and 34 years old, and half of  them had been members of the Communist Party   or the Komsomol – communist youth league before  the war.

 The main charge was treason and only   four defendants were charged with specific  crimes. The remaining seven were charged   with membership in Sonderkommando 10a and thus  alleged participation in German crimes. Their   complicity consisted mainly of participating in  the arrest of partisans and underground fighters,   guarding and transporting them to execution  sites, and participating in gas van operations. 

German commanders and Gestapo officers were named  as the organisers of the crimes but were not   present in the courtroom. Among those charged  in absentia were General of the Infantry and   commander of the 17th Army Richard Ruoff, head of  the local Gestapo Kurt Christmann, and 13 members   of the SS.

 The trial focused on the collaborators  as visible symbols of betrayal, even though the   crimes themselves were planned and directed  by the Nazi occupation system. The Krasnodar   Trial revealed only part of what had happened  in the city. It spoke of murdered Communists,   partisans, Soviet activists, and civilians,  but Jewish victims were largely absent from the   official narrative, despite clear evidence that  they had been targeted by Germans specifically.  

The suffering of the civilians was presented  as universal Soviet suffering, shaped to   serve wartime unity and propaganda needs. During the proceedings, the defendants admitted   their guilt and described their roles in arrests,  guarding, and killings. Some spoke of fear, others   of ambition or belief that Germany would win the  war. All begged the court to spare their lives.  

The verdict was announced on 17 July 1943.  Eight of the defendants: Vassily Tishchenko,   Ivan Rechkalov, Mikhail Lastovina, Nikolai  Pushkarev, Grigory Misan, Yunus Naptsok,   Ivan Kotomtsev and Ignaty Kladov were sentenced  to death by hanging. Three others Grigory Tuchkov,   Vassily Pavlov and Ivan Paramonov were sentenced  to twenty years of forced labour in the Gulag   system, a network of labour camps run by the  Soviet state where survival was uncertain.

 The   three men sent to forced labour disappeared  into the camp system. Transported eastward,   they entered a world of exhausting  work, hunger, disease, and violence.  The execution of the 8 aforementioned Nazi  collaborators took place on the morning of 18 July   1943. Gallows were erected in the main square of  the city Krasnodar.

 Around 30,000 people gathered,   including women and children. Before the condemned  men were hanged, their sentences were read aloud.   Some died quickly, others struggled, trembling, as  the crowd watched and many spectators applauded.   The executions were filmed and photographed, and  reports were published across the Soviet Union. 

Even though the Krasnodar Trial did not punish all  those responsible for the crimes committed during   the occupation, it made the methods of German  rule visible while the war was still ongoing.   It showed how mass murder was organized and how  local collaboration was used to carry it out. The   message was clear – collaboration with the enemy  would be punished publicly and without mercy.

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