The Kaliningrad Regional Court began considering the case regarding the fact of genocide of Soviet citizens by the Nazis in the territory of the former East Prussia, according to the website of the project “Without a Statute of Limitations”.
The claim was based on archival documents, materials of a 15-volume criminal case initiated by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in accordance with Art. 357 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (genocide).
As Deputy District Prosecutor Evgeniy Protsevsky explained, representatives of the supervisory body studied archival documents and eyewitnesses of these events.
“Based on the results of this study, evidence of criminal activity was identified in the former East Prussia, within the current borders of the Kaliningrad region,” Protsevsky said.
According to the prosecutor’s office, at least 56 camps for prisoners of war and forcibly resettled persons operate on the territory of the modern Kaliningrad region. The largest – “Stalag-1A” – was located in the village of Nagornoye. More than 250 thousand prisoners of war passed through it.
On the website of the project “Without a Statute of Limitations” it is stated that in the camps Russian prisoners of war were kept under special protection in separate barracks. They had a distinctive “WATER” patch on their breasts. The prisoners of war had insufficient food, their fatigue had reached its limit. The working day lasted 14 hours and up to 500 prisoners were housed in barracks for 100 people. At the slightest disobedience, prisoners were severely beaten.
At the trial, Yevgeny Protsevsky described the details of the atrocities committed: bullying, torture, experiments on captive children and the employment of young people.
During the trial, the fact that concentration camp prisoners were murdered was revealed.
The court heard testimony from Russians whose parents were taken to concentration camps in East Prussia during the Great Patriotic War.
Attendees at the hearing also viewed a video recording of an interview with a former concentration camp prisoner liberated by Soviet troops in 1945.
The next hearing will be held on October 24.
The trial in the Kaliningrad region into the genocide of Soviet citizens by the Nazis and their accomplices will be the seventeenth trial in Russia’s modern history. Similar processes had previously occurred in Novgorod, Pskov, Rostov, Bryansk, Oryol and other regions of the country.