The Russian FSB has published new declassified archival documents on the brutal murders of Soviet prisoners of war by Nazi troops in the first months of the Great Patriotic War. The documents are available on the agency’s website.

Thus, on October 27, 1941, the head of the Special Department of the NKVD of the Southern Front, Major of State Security Pavel Zelenin, sent a special message to the Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, Commissar of State Security of the 3rd rank Viktor Abakumov and the command of the Southern Front, “On the abuse of captured Red Army servicemen by the Germans.”

The document, in particular, reported that at the Greigovo station on the railway line between Nikolaev and Krivoy Rog, wounded Red Army soldiers remained who had not been evacuated.

“The Germans mocked them, did not give them food, did not bandage the wounded and did not allow any of the local residents to approach them. According to the stories of the peasants of the same station, the Germans shot 135 people, first mockingly tormenting the commanders and political workers, torturing them - they chopped off their hands, cut off their ears, gouged out their eyes and then shot them,” Zelenin reported. Also, according to local residents, at the Lopnino station on August 17, 1941, two prisoners were hacked to death because the Nazis found party cards on them.

During subsequent military operations, security agencies not only recorded the crimes of the Nazis, but also identified the direct perpetrators of abuse and atrocities. These materials served as the basis for conducting a search for Nazi war criminals and their accomplices, the FSB concluded.

Earlier, the FSB declassified documents on medical experiments by Nazi doctors on Soviet prisoners and civilians in Crimea. In particular, a large volume of blood was taken from prisoners at one time, which was then used for transfusions to the Germans.