28. Zvyagintsev, Tribunal dlya ‘stalinskikh sokolov,’ 136–8. A. I. Pokryshkin (1913–1985) was the only pilot who became a Hero of the Soviet Union three times.
29. V. N. Stepakov, Narkom SMERSHa (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2003), 95.
30. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 6.
31. A. Kokurin and N. Petrov, ‘NKVD–NKGB–SMERSH: struktura, funktsii, kadry. Stat’ya chetvertaya (1944-1945),’ Svobodnaya mysl’, No. 9 (1997), 97–101 (in Russian).
32. B. V. Sokolov, Beria. Sud’ba vsesil’nogo narkoma (Moscow: Veche, 2003), 167–70 (in Russian).
33. Valerii Yaremenko, ‘“I kolesa stuchat, i telegarmmy letyat…” K godovshchune deportatsii chechenskogo naroda,’ Polit.ru, February 23, 2006 (in Russian), http://www.polit.ru/article/2006/02/23/checheviza/, retrieved Septmber 8, 2011.
34. Eduard Abramyan, Kavkaztsy v Abvere (Moscow: Yauza, 2006), 116 (in Russian).
35. Details in Yaremenko, ‘I kolesa stuchat, i telegarmmy letyat…’
36. Abramyan, Kavkaztsy v Abvere, 118–28.
37. Details in Hans von Herwarth and Frederick Starr, Against Two Evils (New York: Rawson & Wade, 1981), 228–39.
38. Sokolov, Beria, 152–64.
39. Quoted in ibid., 162.
40. Document Nos. 156–165 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 481–94, and Nos. 3.111-3.136 in Stalinskie deportatsii, 443–76.
41. GKO Order Nos. 5073-ss and 5074-ss dated January 31, 1944. Document Nos. 3.111 and 3.112 in ibid., 443–7.
42. Interview with Nikolai Tolkachev, former NKVD officer, on May 25, 2009, http://www.iremember.ru/drugie-voyska/tolkachev-nikolay-fomich.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.
43. Excerpts from various NKVD reports in Yurii Stetsovsky, Istoriya sovetskikh repressii, T. 1 (Moscow: Znak-SP, 1997), 460–4 (in Russian).
44. Sokolov, Beria, 165–6.
45. Document Nos. 156–169 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 481–6, and Nos. 3.136–3.145 in Stalinskie deportatsii, 477–91.
46. Document Nos. 166–174 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 494–505, and Nos. 3.146–3.170 in Stalinskie deportatsii, 494–522.
47. Herwarth and Starr, Against Two Evils, 238.
48. Document Nos. 3.172–3.183 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 525–40.
CHAPTER 20
First Trials of War Criminals
With the retaking of Soviet territory by the Red Army, SMERSH also undertook the arrest and investigation of German war criminals and Russian collaborators who had committed atrocities during the occupation. The public trials continued after the war.
First Public Trial
On July 5, 1943, Abakumov reported to Stalin on the investigation by the UKR SMERSH of the North Caucasian Front into the atrocities committed by Sonderkommando SS 10a (SK10a) in the city of Krasnodar during the German occupation.
The SK10a, a sub-unit of Einsatzgruppe D commanded by Otto Ohlendorf, consisted of about 120 men. From June 1941 to August 1942, it operated under SS-Standartenführer Heintz Seetzen, first in the Ukraine, where it exterminated the Jewish population in the towns of Berdyansk, Melitopol, Mariupol, and Odessa, and then in the cities of Taganrog on the Sea of Azov and Rostov-on-Don.1 In August 1942, SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Kurt Christmann succeeded Seetzen, who received the War Service Cross (first class) with Swords for his extermination activity. The SK10a continued operations until July 1943, when the German troops began to retreat. According to Abakumov’s report, under Christmann’s command the unit exterminated 4,000 inhabitants of Krasnodar. The SK10a killed its victims using the gas van known as the dushegubka (soul-killing machine) in Russia.
Abakumov described how, after the Red Army had liberated Krasnodar, seven inhabitants had come forward claiming they had been members of an underground Communist organization fighting against the occupation. However, they related so many details of the German atrocities that SMERSH operatives began to suspect that these individuals had participated in the executions. The investigation revealed that, in fact, they were Soviet members of the SK10a unit. With the help of local witnesses, the UKR SMERSH arrested eleven former SK members and investigated their crimes. Abakumov suggested putting these individuals on open trial in Krasnodar.
Georgii Malenkov ordered that the Krasnodar report be considered by a commission consisting of Nikolai Shvernik, Chairman of the Extraordinary State Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating Atrocities Perpetrated by the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices (ChGK); Andrei Vyshinsky, deputy foreign Commissar; Nikolai Rychkov, USSR Justice Commissar; Viktor Bochkov, USSR Prosecutor; and Abakumov.2 The ChGK was created after Stalin declined participation in the United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes proposed in October 1942 by the British and U.S. governments.
The Malenkov Commission decided that the Military Tribunal of the North Caucasian Front would try eleven defendants in an open trial, which was held in Krasnodar on July 14–17, 1943, and presided over by Judiciary Major N. Y. Mayorov, Chairman of the Military Tribunal of the North Caucasian Front.3 Eleven Soviet collaborators, charged with treason under Article 58-1a (civilians) and 58-1b (Soviet servicemen), were accused of assisting Colonel Christmann’s SK unit in the killing of 7,000 people—patients in the municipal hospital, a convalescent home, and a children’s hospital—in Krasnodar in 1942–43.4 The court appointed three counselors to defend the accused. However, Soviet legal procedures allowed the counselors to meet with their clients only in the court and they were not permitted to cross-examine eyewitnesses.
During the trial, two defendants, N. Pushkarev and V. Tishchenko, described in detail the gas vans used by Einsatzkommando 10a for killing Jews and other victims. Until then, the existence of these vehicles was a Nazi secret. A witness named Ivan Kotov, who had been loaded into a gas van but survived, also testified:
On 22 August [1942] I went to Municipal Hospital No. 3… As I entered the courtyard I saw a large truck with a dark-gray body. Before I had taken two steps a German officer seized me by the collar and pushed me into the vehicle. The interior of the van was crammed full of people, some of them completely naked, some of them in their underclothes. The door was closed. I noticed that the van started to move. Minutes later I began to feel sick. I was losing consciousness. I had previously taken an anti-air raid course, and I immediately understood that we were being poisoned by some kind of gas. I tore off my shirt, wet it with urine, and pressed it to my mouth and nose. My breathing became easier, but I finally lost consciousness. When I came to, I was lying in a ditch with several dozen corpses. With great effort I managed to climb out and drag myself.5
Eight defendants were sentenced to death and publicly hanged.6 The rest were convicted to twenty years in special hard labor camps. Alexander Werth, a British journalist, referred to the trial as ‘first-rate hate propaganda’ aimed at emphasizing the suffering of the Soviet people under the German occupation.7 The German SK10a members were not caught and only a few German officers of this unit were ever put on trial. Otto Ohlendorf was the main defendant at the Nuremberg trial of Einsatzgruppen leaders (September 1947–April 1948).8 He was sentenced to death and hanged on June 7, 1951. SK commander Seetzen went into hiding near Hamburg after the war under the false name ‘Michael Gollwitzer’. After his arrest by the British authorities in September 1945, he committed suicide.