Koryukevska tragedy – the brutal 6700 massacre of villagers Koryukivka (now the city of Chernihiv oblast), carried 1–2 March 1943 the Hungarian military gendarmerie troops during World War II.
The scale of the tragedy – exclusive among settlements of Ukraine, the Soviet Union and Europe. Koryukivka murder by the number of victims is almost 45 times dominated Belarusian Khatyn in 41 – Czechoslovak Lidice, 12 – French Oradour. The massacre of civilians were punitive operations Hungarian units in response to the actions of Soviet partisans, led by an officer of the NKVD of the USSR Oleksyi Fedorov. The special tragedy of this event adds the fact that the guerrilla group forces O. Fedorov punitive dominated by the number of soldiers is almost 10 times, but the guerrillas did nothing to rescue residents Koryukivka…
Koryukevska tragedy – the brutal 6700 massacre of villagers Koryukivka (now the city of Chernihiv oblast), carried 1–2 March 1943 the Hungarian military gendarmerie troops during World War II.
The scale of the tragedy – exclusive among settlements of Ukraine, the Soviet Union and Europe. Koryukivka murder by the number of victims is almost 45 times dominated Belarusian Khatyn in 41 – Czechoslovak Lidice, 12 – French Oradour. The massacre of civilians were punitive operations Hungarian units in response to the actions of Soviet partisans, led by an officer of the NKVD of the USSR Oleksyi Fedorov. The special tragedy of this event adds the fact that the guerrilla group forces O. Fedorov punitive dominated by the number of soldiers is almost 10 times, but the guerrillas did nothing to rescue residents Koryukivka.
During the German occupation of Ukrainian forests Polissia were the center of the Soviet partisan movement, including village Koryukivka Chernihiv region. In late February 1943 the family of one the commanders of the guerrilla sabotage unit, the head of the local collective farm Theodosius Stupak, namely children and wife captured by the Germans and thrown into prison Koryukivka. February 26 Stupak’s wife was killed.
On the night of February 27, troops partisan group of military officers of the NKVD of the USSR Oleksyi Fedorov enemy attacked the local garrison, consisting mainly of Hungarian military. During the swoop killed 78 enemy soldiers and 8 captured. Children of Commander P. Stupak and several prisoners were released, some buildings
blown up. In this activity, died Theodosius Stupak.
The day after the attack saboteurs leave the village has been blocked. However, at least one woman with three children in this day of Koryukivka escaped. On the morning of March 1, 1943 to Koryukivka SS unit arrived from the city Shchors. Initially, the Germans tried to banish all residents in the village to the largest facilities – theaters, restaurants, churches. When some of them, anticipating death, tried to escape punitive started to go into buildings and shoot their inhabitants.
March 2 clogged with corpses facilities (restaurant only 500 bodies) started to burn, but the killings continued. Avengers combed the village, and took the people alive and thrown into the burning house. Faith Sylchenko, who hid in a haystack, saw monsters thrown into the fire of her mother, sister and daughter. At the same time large groups of people “mowed «with machine guns in the courtyard of the church, on the collective farm yard in a pigsty. By the end of the day March 2 Koryukivka almost completely burned survived only ten brick houses and a church. Residents of nearby settlements were threatened that they are not helped neighbors. It was issued an order to destroy all inhabitants of Koryukivka.
Surviving villagers hided or fled into the woods. Some of them a few days back on the still smoldering, mostly elderly. But on March 9 Germans went back to Koryukivka and burned alive accident.
According to the forensic medical examination carried out after the war, death by firing squad procured of machines and heavy machine guns, blunt objects, and bumps burning alive.
As a result of punitive action in Koryukivka was destroyed around 7000 civilians, burned 1,390 buildings. 5612 victims of the massacre remained unidentified. Koryukivka was almost completely burned, the population that lived there, destroyed. Guide the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory has made a request for information about the direct perpetrators of the tragedy Koryukivka to archive the Federal Security Service of Russia. In an official letter to the FSB states that the mass executions of civilians, destruction of settlements Chernigivschyna and other war crimes in the region from October 1942 to September 1943, the Hungarian troops conducted 105th Light Division from the Eastern group occupying forces as directed by the commander of a group of general lieutenant Aldia-Papa-Zoltan-Johan, 1895 born, native from Budapest. In general, the Hungarian part of the Chernihiv participated in the destruction of up to 60 thousand civilians. Order of execution of penal action gave the Chief of Staff 399 the main field commandant Franz Bruno Bayer, 1888 born, comes from the German city of Kassel.
Chernigov historians S. Pavlenko and P. Butko believe that the guerrillas could save at least part of the inhabitants Koryukivka death, but his deliberate omission, intentionally did not.
According to official data, in early 1943, the first secretary of the connection Chernihiv Oblast Committee of the Communist Party Olexandr Fedorov had more than 12 units total of 5.5 thousand fighters, most of them based near Koryukivka in neighboring villages.
According to historians, the amount of punitive seconded to «retaliation» was about 300–500 people.
«There was no command. We just watched» – confessed after the war, one of the guerrilla detachment Fedorov.
Numerous orders of senior military leadership oriented partisans to commit sabotage and destroy enemy manpower, but there is no document which indicated the need to protect civilians. One can only guess that provoking the Nazis for mass killings, saboteurs actually performed directive Moscow: «… raise the Ukrainian people to fight against the invaders».
None punitive operation is not interrupted by Hitler Stalin’s troops, it was advantageous to provoke as many atrocities by the German administration. Everyone knew that the Nazis killed for each soldier shot up to 100 civilians, and this order they persistently followed. And partisans and underground fighters, killing Germans, even did not dig corpse. This often happened just in the settlements, and then the Germans shot people at once, the village burned. As conceived by the Moscow population of Ukraine had to prove that the famine of 1932–1933, shootings 1930 – it’s not terrible, but the German regime is much worse. And Hitler, for his side, believed that guerrilla warfare allows identifying «undesirable elements» that must be destroyed. According to the plans Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler, the number of the Slavic population was reduced to 30 million people.
The symbol of the war crimes of the Nazis in the Soviet Union, Soviet propaganda has made Belarusian huts where killed 149 people (according to modern German data – 152). Destruction is about 7000 in the Ukrainian Koryukivka in Chernihiv some ideological reasons actually concealed.
Journalist J. potash hypothesized that Soviet ideologists raised to shield Khatyn so that at least once a terrible crime to disguise the village of Katyn in the Smolensk region of consonant called the Belarusian village huts. In the spring of 1940 in the USSR were executed around 22 thousands of Polish prisoners of war, thousands of them were killed in the Katyn forest. Now these events are known as the Katyn execution.
Subsequently, the Hero of the Soviet Union have O.F. Fedorov, writes the foreword to the novel B. cornerstone «Ash glow»: «I am deeply convinced that these stories needed especially our youth. Our sons and grandsons … they need to know what price have won previous generations right to live freely in our land. Know and protect those gains.»
O. Fedorov had in mind the operation of guerrilla liberation children Theodosius Stupak. But none word about the tragedy of the 7th thousand deaths if it never happened. In his memoirs, the commander found only a memory of those events: «The most interesting and most successful raid was on Koryukivka garrison.»
Destruction of two days (1–2 March 1943) by the German invaders and their allies over 6800 civilians Koryukivka at the Nuremberg Trials called the most ambitious tragedy of the Second World War. However, this event is a real rarity in the writings of the Second World War. Mention of it is not found in the textbooks.
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