SS - TheHistoryFiles.com

British Returning Soviet Prisoners end of WWII

Betrayal of Cossacks at Lientz. Painting by S.G.Korolkoff At first the administration had no reservations about handing over to the Russians even unwilling Soviet citizens. In June 1945, for example, the Combined Chiefs of Staff authorized SACMED Field Marshal Alexander to transfer to the Soviet authorities approximately 50,000 Cossacks who had been serving with the […]

PoW, SS

FORMER INMATES OF AUSCHWITZ

Other former inmates of Auschwitz were also to suffer at the hands of the Russians—ironically Russians themselves. 10,000 Red Army prisoners of war had been sent to Auschwitz in October 1941 to build the camp here at Birkenau. The handful who survived this horror, were, after their liberation, about to be persecuted again. Pavel Stenkin, […]

PoW, SS

Foundation gives voice to Nazi-era forced laborers

Many forced laborers became pariahs once they returned to their home countries. The Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation no longer pays out compensation to victims of Nazi forced labor in 2007. But it hasn’t stopped working to publicize the former forced workers’ suffering. The Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation (EVZ) began paying compensation to […]

PoW, SS

HE WILL SOON LOSE THAT SMILE…

…whether sharing a joke with his comrade or just happy to have survived…so far… The war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (1941–1945) was arguably the largest and most brutal theater of land warfare in the twentieth century. Fueled by bitter ideological antagonism, the enormous cruelty at the front extended directly into the […]

ROA, SS

Russia reflects on sixty-five years since the Soviet Union’s World War Two victory

This online supplement is produced and published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia), which takes sole responsibility for the content. Alexander Mekhanik, Expert magazine Something has changed in Russia. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the values on which Soviet society was based – and after two decades of hard times – the […]

PoW, SS

Russia grants WW II vets housing, amnesty

MOSCOW, April 16 (UPI) — The Russian Duma passed legislation Friday giving amnesty to most World War II veterans and providing them with free housing. The amnesty also applies to those who survived imprisonment in German concentration camps, workers in munitions factories and survivors of the Leningrad siege, ITAR-Tass reported. It does not include those […]

PoW, SS

Soviet Prisoners of War, 1941 to 1945

Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) constitute one of the major groups that fell victim to Nazi German mass violence. For territories under German military occupation, the Department of Military Administration, Quartermaster General in the Supreme Command of Ground Troops (OKH) was in charge of Soviet POWs, whereas in Germany and areas under German civil administration, […]

PoW, ROA, SS

Soviet PoW and Polish and Soviet Civilians – The Holocaust?

Of the 5,700,000 Soviet soldiers who surrendered to the Germans during World War II, more than 3,000,000 were either shot shortly after capture, starved to death in prisoner of war camps, gassed in extermination camps, or worked to death in concentration camps. They are usually ignored in books about the Holocaust because at the time […]

Cossack, SS

The Cossacks

Operation Keelhaul – Betrayal of the Cossacks in Lienz The Cossacks were probably the most militarily skilled and loyal foreign volunteers of the Wehrmacht. In September 1942 the German cavalry General von Pannwitz started raising a complete division with Cossacks, by absorption of previous regiment-sized units like Kampfgruppen von Jungschultz, Lehman, Konomow and Wolff, fresh […]

PoW, ROA, SS, Ukraine

Traitors to the fatherland?

PHL Posters in light-boxes in Lviv praised the SS Galicia, a Ukrainian unit that fought under Nazi Germany, as defenders of the nation against Soviet aggression. Nationalist politician Oleh Tyahnybok placed the ads. The debate still rages over the SS Galicia, hailed by some as anti-Soviet nationalists. They are either war criminals or national heroes, […]