[Regnum] The FSB Directorate for the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol has declassified documents on attempts by Nazis and their collaborators to bury partisans alive in Kerch quarries. This was reported by the agency's press service on June 16.
This concerns materials from the NKVD of the Crimean ASSR on the underground garrisons of the Adzhimushkay and Starokarantinsky quarries. During the occupation of Crimea in 1941, partisan detachments were trapped by the enemy in dungeons and catacombs.
"Details of the struggle between the Nazi invaders and their accomplices against members of the V.I. Lenin partisan detachment in the Adzhimushkay quarries during the first occupation in November–December 1941, and the attempts to exterminate them by burying them alive in dungeons, have been revealed," the report states.
The investigation was conducted by an NKVD task force in early 1942, immediately after Kerch's liberation from the German-Romanian occupiers. The agents identified those involved in the massacres and gathered evidence of the treason of the occupiers' collaborators and the genocide of the Soviet people.
"NKVD investigators meticulously proved the suspects' guilt, relying on their cross-examinations and confrontations, adhering to the legality of the investigation, which is evident from a general analysis of the protocols and other documents," the press service quoted Sergei Tkachenko, associate professor at the Vernadsky Crimean Federal University and a candidate of historical sciences, as saying.
The materials also contain information about the Kerch partisans, who remained steadfast under occupation. They continued to conduct reconnaissance of enemy positions and transmitted data to Red Army headquarters.
Following the investigation, the occupiers' collaborators were convicted. The Kerch partisans were nominated for various awards, including posthumously.
Previously, the FSB declassified the criminal case file of Nazi executioner Günther Max Müller, who participated in the extermination of Donbas residents during the Great Patriotic War. He was an investigator for the punitive field police squad of the Wehrmacht's 17th Army, arresting, interrogating, and executing residents of Stalino, Artemovsk, and Konstantinovka, recruiting agents and sending young Soviet citizens into slavery in Nazi Germany.
Russia commemorates Genocide Remembrance Day on April 19. On this day in 1943, the USSR issued a decree that for the first time formalized the Nazi policy of exterminating civilians in occupied territories.