In 1972, three former SK10a officers tried in West Germany received lenient four-year sentences for the 1941 massacre of 200 Jews in the city of Taganrog and the 1942 massacre of 214 children in the town of Yeisk. In 1973, three more officers were convicted and given from two to four and a half years for shooting hundreds of Jews and other civilians in Ukraine in 1941.
Finally, in 1980, Kurt Christmann was tried in Munich.9 From 1946 to 1948, he was interned in the British occupation zone under the false name ‘Dr. Ronda’, after which he successfully fled to Argentina. He returned to West Germany in 1956 and was arrested by West German police in November 1979 on charges of participating in the murders of 105 persons in Krasnodar in 1942–43. On December 19, 1980, a court sentenced Christmann to ten years in prison. He died in 1987.
The last SK10a case—of Helmut Oberlander, who had served in SK10a as an interpreter—ended in November 2009.10 In February 1942, the seventeen-year-old Oberlander, an ethnic German and Soviet citizen, was conscripted to the occupation troops. In 1954 he arrived in Canada and obtained Canadian citizenship in 1960. His citizenship was revoked in 2001 and 2007, but there was no proof that he had participated in the SK10a atrocities. In 2009 the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal reinstated Oberlander’s Canadian citizenship.
The Kharkov Trial
On September 2, 1943, Abakumov suggested trying several German officers taken prisoner on January 31, 1943, when the 6th German Army surrendered in Stalingrad. These officers had committed atrocities against Soviet POWs, and were the first Germans anywhere to be tried as war criminals. Abakumov wrote:
To: Sovnarkom of the USSR, Comrade Vyshinsky
In mid-January 1943, while tightening the encirclement of the 6th [German] Army, our troops took over a transit camp for POWs, the so-called Dulag-205, located near the village of Alekseevka not far from Stalingrad. Thousands of bodies of Red Army soldiers and commanders were found on and near the territory of the camp. All of the prisoners had died of exhaustion and cold. Also, there were a few hundred extremely exhausted former Red Army servicemen.
The investigation conducted by the Main Directorate ‘SMERSH’ revealed that the German soldiers and officers, following orders of the German high command, severely mistreated POWs—brutally exterminating them by beating and execution, creating unbearable conditions in the camp, and starving them to death. It was also established that the Germans subjected POWs to the same brutality in the camps in Darnitsa near Kiev, Dergachi near Kharkov, and in the towns of Poltava and Rossoshi.
The following direct perpetrators of the death of Soviet people are currently under investigation in the Main Directorate ‘SMERSH’: KÖRPERT, RUDOLF, former commandant of the Dulag-205 camp, colonel of the German Army, born 1886 in the Sudetenland (Germany) to a merchant’s family. Taken prisoner on January 31, 1943, in the city of Stalingrad.
VON KUNOWSKI, WERNER, former chief quartermaster of the 6th German Army, lieutenant colonel, born 1907 in Silesia, a noble, son of a major general of the German Army. Taken prisoner on January 31, 1943, in the city of Stalingrad.
LANGHELD, WILHELM, former counterintelligence officer (Abwehr officer) at the Dulag-205 camp, captain of the German Army, born 1891 in the city of Frankfurt-on-Main to a family of bureaucrats, member of the Fascist Party since 1933. Taken prisoner on January 31, 1943, in the city of Stalingrad.
MÄDER, OTTO, former adjutant to the Commandant of the Dulag-205 camp, senior lieutenant of the German Army, born 1895 in the Erfurt Region (Germany), member of the Fascist Party since 1935. Taken prisoner on January 31, 1943, in the city of Stalingrad.
The testimonies of KUNOWSKI, LANGHELD, and MÄDER confirmed a direct order from the highest command of the German Army to exterminate Soviet POWs, both officers and privates, as ‘inferiors’…
Thus, approximately 4,000 Soviet POWs were imprisoned in the Alekseevsk camp, although it was built to hold only 1,200 prisoners…
As the German officers KÖRPERT, KUNOWSKI, LANGHELD, and MÄDER testified, Soviet POWs were half-starved in the Dulag-205 camp. Beginning in December 1942, the high command of the 6th German Army represented by Head of Staff, Lt. Gen. [Arthur] SCHMIDT, completely stopped food supplies to the camp…11 By the time the camp was liberated by the Red Army, approximately 5,000 men had died. The POWs, almost insane from hunger, were hunted down by dogs during the distribution of food, which was prepared from waste products…
LANGHELD testified: ‘I usually beat the POWs with a stick 4–5 cm in diameter. This happened… also in the other POW camps…’ During the investigation… former Red Army servicemen… held in the Dulag-205 camp, were identified and interrogated…
Thus, ALEKSEEV, A. A. … testified… on August 10, 1943:
‘Mortality in the camp was high because… bread and water were not given at all…
‘Instead of water, we collected [and drank] dirty snow mixed with blood, which caused mass illness among the POWs…
‘We slept on the ground and it was impossible to get warm. Our warm clothes and valenki [felt boots] were taken from us, and we were given torn boots and clothes from the dead…
‘Many servicemen, unable to withstand the horrific conditions of the camp, went insane. About 150 men died per day, and during one day in the first days of 1943, 216 men died…The German commanders used to set dogs—Alsatians—on the POWs. The dogs knocked down the weak POWs and dragged them across the ground, while the Germans stood around laughing. Public shootings of POWs were common in the camp…’
KÖRPERT, KUNOWSKI, LANGHELD, and MÄDER admitted their guilt.
The case is still under investigation. I have notified the government that an open trial and its detailed description in the media are necessary.
Perhaps Abakumov had addressed his report to Vyshinsky, and not to Stalin, because the question of war crimes concerned an agreement with the Allies. A month later, from October 18 to November 11, 1943, a conference of Allied foreign ministers was held in Moscow, resulting in the Moscow Declaration signed by the Soviet, American, British, and Chinese leaders. Its section titled Statement on Atrocities (signed by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) dealt with German war criminals: ‘Those German officers and men and members of the Nazi party who have been responsible for or have taken a consenting part in the… atrocities, massacres and executions will be sent back to the countries in which their abominable deeds were done in order that they may be judged and punished according to the laws of these liberated countries and of free governments which will be erected therein.’13
The trial of the four German officers who participated in atrocities in the Dulag-205 camp did not take place in 1943, probably because SMERSH continued interrogations of Körpert, Mäder, and four other high officials of the camp until the autumn of 1944. However, Wilhelm Langheld, also mentioned in the September 1943 report, was a defendant at a trial that came about because of a new report from Abakumov to the GKO (addressed to Stalin and Molotov) on November 18, 1943. Abakumov suggested launching a new open trial of German war criminals who had participated in the liquidation of Soviet citizens in Kharkov and Smolensk.14