Text taken from the Telegram channel of militera/6099
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] Testimony of witness Viktor Fedorovich Fyodorov
The Leningrad Trial in the Case of Crimes Committed by Former German Army Servicemen on the Territory of the Leningrad Region During the Occupation. Evening Session, December 30, 1945
Chairman: Witness Fyodorov, what is your name, patronymic, year of birth, and where were you born?
Answer: Viktor Fyodorovich, born in 1886, from the village of Gnilino, Pskov District, a collective farmer.
Chairman: Comrade Prosecutor, I request that you begin the questioning of witness Fyodorov.
Prosecutor: Witness Fyodorov, please answer the following question:
Where did you live when the Germans were on the territory of the Pskov District?
Answer: At that time, I lived in the village of Rostkovo.
Prosecutor: When were the Germans last in your village and what did they do there?
Answer: This case was before the burning of the village.
Prosecutor: What did the Germans do the last time they were in your village
Answer: Comrade prosecutor, should I answer the questions or tell you everything in detail about what happened to me and my family?
Prosecutor: Tell us what happened to you, your family, and your village?
Answer: I want to tell you everything as it really was. I am already 58 years old, and I want to talk only about what happened and was done in our village.
In the evening, the village elder told us that we must report to work early in the morning; those who do not report will be given a few lashes and a fine of five hundred. Early in the morning, while it was still completely dark, we went to work, and not far from the village we met a multitude of German robbers who were riding in a cart, fully armed, along with their leader.
We asked: “Where are you going?”
They answered us: “We don’t understand, we don’t understand,” and drove on.
We, in turn, went to work. We had just started work when we heard shooting, our hands were withering, our souls felt that something was wrong in the village;
We saw them driving away our cows and all the livestock. Someone shouted, "Fedorov, they're burning Rostkovo."
Hearing this, we stopped working and ran to our village, which was six kilometers away.
I said, "Comrades, we won't make it anyway, we'll be exhausted, we have to go," and when we got there, we saw the entire village was on fire. We were stomping around in our felt boots, but it was no use. Not a single person was around.
We ran to another village, thinking that maybe our people had been driven there, but we didn't find a single person there. We only learned from the locals that all of our people had been burned in a barn, and the rest had been shot. We walked around and walked and went to neighboring villages to spend the night. After spending the night, the next morning we went back to Rostkovo to look for our relatives. Only ten of us remained.
In the village, we found only the corpses of those herded into a large barn. All of these corpses were burned, most of them still sitting. One corpse had only half its head and half its torso, but when we touched the head, it crumbled. Some had burned hands, others had burned feet.
Looking at them, we were overcome with fear, and we ran into the forest, where we sat all day, but our clothes weren't winter clothes: it got cold, so we went to another village, where the village headman gave us lodging. After spending the night there, we returned to the forest again, immediately dug ourselves a dugout, and so the 10 remaining survivors began to live in it.
At first, the partisans helped us, but then they began to forage for themselves, taking some of what remained in the village of Rostkovo. And so we lived until the arrival of our heroes, our Red Army.
Comrades! I had three sons, as tall, as handsome as you, and now I am left alone - an old man, and I live in a bathhouse. If I could, I would cut those robbers to pieces, I cannot look at them calmly for my ruined life.
I have nothing more to say, citizen judges.
Prosecutor: Tell me, who among those burned and shot were from your relatives?
Answer: From my family there was my good and beautiful wife, first of all, and secondly, my daughter-in-law, born in 1914, and a four-year-old granddaughter, like a doll, whom we cherished and pitied.
Prosecutor: Do you know which of the neighbors or residents?
Answer: There were 17 families in total. I know them all, but it is difficult to count now.
Chairman: And the children?
Answer: There were thirty-three children, and a total of 64 people died.
Prosecutor: Was it possible to determine whether they were burned or shot?
Answer: No. They were not shot, they were all burned in one barn, only in one other building we found three more bodies of shot people.
Prosecutor: So, from your family those who died were: your wife Maria Nikolaevna, 53 years old, your daughter-in-law and her daughter Inna, 4 years old.
Answer: Yes.
Prosecutor: I have no more questions.
Chairman: What date, month and year was this?
Answer: December 23, 1943.
Chairman: Who burned your village and its inhabitants? Do you know the German soldiers by name?
Answer: Citizens judges, I will not say who did the burning, they swooped down — the German punitive forces, and it is difficult to recognize them by sight.
Chairman: But it was German soldiers who burned them?
Answer: Yes, they are worse than beasts, citizen judges.
No statute of limitations.
Documents from open trials of Nazi criminals and their accomplices, conducted by the USSR in 1943-1947. : Coll. doc. : Vol. 2. 1944–1946 / ed. A. V. Yurasov; compiled by O. V. Lavinskaya, Yu. G. Orlova, compiled by E. V. Balushkina [et al.] — Moscow: Svyaz’ Epokh Foundation, 202 5. — 6 48 p. : [ 16] p. ill. — pp. 384–386.