During the Great Patriotic War, not only the active army suffered colossal losses. Millions of Soviet prisoners of war and ordinary residents of the occupied territories became victims of the Nazis. In the republics and regions of the Soviet Union, occupied by Hitler's troops, a genuine genocide of the population began. First of all, the Nazis began to physically destroy the citizens of the Soviet Union of Jewish and Gypsy nationalities, communists and Komsomol members, disabled people who were in the occupied territories, but very often people who did not fall into any of the listed categories became victims of genocide. When they talk about the Holocaust on the territory of the USSR, first of all, they recall the tragic events in the western regions and republics of the country - in Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, Crimea, and also in the North Caucasus. But the Nazis were marked with bloody traces in other regions of the Soviet Union, where hostilities were taking place, including in the Leningrad region.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler's Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and on June 29 the troops of neighboring Finland crossed the border with the USSR. On September 8, the formations of the Hitlerite Army Group "North" captured Shlisselburg, and Finnish troops came out from the northern part to the approaches to Leningrad. Thus, the city found itself in a ring formed by the enemy troops. The blockade of Leningrad began, which lasted 872 days. The defense of the city and the approaches to it was held by units and formations of the Baltic Fleet, the 8th, 23rd, 42nd and 55th armies of the Leningrad Front.
Archaeologist Konstantin Moiseevich Plotkin - Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Russian State Pedagogical Institute. Herzen, and in addition - the author of the book "The Holocaust at the Walls of Leningrad", which is dedicated to the tragic events that unfolded more than 76 years ago in the immediate vicinity of the northern capital. Unlike the cities in the western part of the Soviet Union, the Jewish population in the Leningrad region was not so large. Quite a lot of Jews lived in Leningrad, but the Nazis never entered the northern capital. Therefore, the inhabitants of cities and towns located in the vicinity of Leningrad and occupied by the Nazis suffered from the massacres of the Jewish population. By the time the Great Patriotic War began, the Jewish population living in this territory numbered approximately 7, 5 thousand people. Young men fit for service in the Red Army for health reasons were mobilized to the front, while women, children, the elderly and the disabled remained.
The Jewish population of Leningrad, since the northern capital was not taken by the Nazis, was not affected by the mass genocide initiated by the Nazis. The Jews of Leningrad, like other blockades, endured the brunt of the city's siege. But many of them, at least, managed to survive, which cannot be said about the Jewish population of those cities and towns of the Leningrad region, which were occupied by Nazi troops. In total, in the fall of 1941, 25 districts of the Leningrad Region were partially or completely ruled by the Nazis.
On September 18, 1941, Hitler's troops broke into the city of Pushkin. The invaders began to plunder the property of cultural objects located in Pushkin, including the decoration of the Amber Room of the Grand Palace. But the plundering of the city was only one of the crimes of the Nazi occupiers, and very innocent compared to the horrors that awaited the civilian population of the city. It is Pushkin, which has become the northernmost large settlement of the Leningrad Region, that is also called the northern border of the Holocaust.
During the battles, the civilians of Pushkin hid in the basements of numerous historical monuments - Gostiny Dvor, Lyceum, etc. Naturally, when the Germans occupied the city, the first thing they did was to inspect the basements, expecting to meet the Red Army soldiers, communists and Jews hiding there. Further events unfolded in almost the same way as in other Soviet cities occupied by the Nazis. On September 20, 2 days after the capture of the city, on the square in front of the Catherine Palace, the Nazis shot 38 people, including 15 children. Several more shootings were carried out in local parks. The Nazis distributed the belongings of the murdered Jews to local residents, thereby encouraging the latter to report on the whereabouts of Jewish and communist hiding persons.
Eyewitnesses of those terrible events have preserved in their memory the names and surnames of those Hitlerite punishers who personally organized the murders of Soviet people and participated in their execution. The German commandant of Pushkin, Root, commanded the executions of Soviet citizens. He was a young German officer of about 30 years old who served as commandant until November 1941. Root's assistant was the German Aubert; German Gestapo men Reichel and Rudolf were directly involved in searches and arrests in Pushkin.
In early October 1941, the occupation authorities pasted an order in Pushkin on the mandatory registration of city residents. The Jews were ordered to appear at the commandant's office on October 4, and the rest of the inhabitants of Pushkin - on October 8-10. As in Rostov-on-Don, where the Jews proceeded to the place of their destruction in the Zmievskaya Balka voluntarily, being confident that the Germans would not harm them, in Pushkin the local Jewish population for the most part also did not hide from the Nazis. On the morning of October 4, 1941, the Jews themselves reached out to the German commandant's office. Probably most of them did not believe that the Nazi invaders would shoot them, but thought that they would be sent to work or, at worst, to concentration camps. These expectations did not come true. Since the front line passed near Pushkin, the Nazi occupation command decided not to stand on ceremony with Jews and other categories of persons who, according to the position of the Third Reich, were subject to physical destruction.
As soon as a sufficient number of Jews had accumulated in the courtyard of the commandant's office, several hundred people were taken to the park and then shot on the outskirts of the park, in the Rose Field. Those Jews who did not appear on the unfortunate day of October 4 at the commandant's office were caught by military patrols. As in many other occupied cities, local traitors were “zealous” in Pushkin. They were distinguished by particular cruelty, trying to take out on defenseless people some grievances against the Soviet regime, or their own complexes.
One of the schools in the city of Pushkin was led by a man named Tikhomirov. It would seem that the director of a Soviet school should have been the most self-possessed and ideological person. But Tikhomirov turned out to be a latent anti-Soviet and anti-Semite. He personally greeted the Nazi troops that entered the city, and then began to identify the hiding Jews and even personally took part in their murders. Another famous traitor was a certain Igor Podlensky. Previously, he served in the Red Army, but then went over to the side of the enemy and already in November 1941 was appointed deputy mayor of the city, and then, in January 1942, chief of the civil auxiliary police. It was the people of Podlensky and he who personally participated in raids and raids to identify the Jews who were hiding in the gostiny dvor filed. In December 1942, he was responsible for registering all residents of Pushkin. But if Tikhomirov, Podlensky and people like him acted more from ideological considerations, then many traitors went to the service of the Nazis solely for selfish reasons. Such people did not care what to do, just to receive a reward.
The extermination of the Jewish population began not only in Pushkin, but also in other occupied cities and towns of the Leningrad Region. Historian Konstantin Plotkin emphasizes that the facts of massacres against Jews were revealed in 17 settlements of the Leningrad Region, including Pushkin, Gatchina, Krasnoe Selo, Pavlovsk and a number of other places. Gatchina, which the Germans captured even earlier than Pushkin, became the center of Hitler's punitive forces. It was here that the Einsatz-group "A" and special Sonderkommando were located, which were moved from Gatchina to other settlements of the Leningrad region to carry out punitive operations and the mass destruction of Soviet citizens. In Gatchina, the central concentration camp in these places was also created. Transfer points were opened in Vyritsa, Torfyanom, Rozhdestveno. In addition to Jews, the Gatchina concentration camp housed prisoners of war, communists and Komsomol members, as well as persons detained by the Germans in the front line and aroused their suspicions.
The total number of murdered Jews varies within 3, 6 thousand people. At least, these are the numbers that appear in the reports of the Einsatz groups operating in the occupied districts of the Leningrad Region. That is, in fact, the entire Jewish population of the occupied territories of the region was destroyed, with the exception of the men mobilized to the front, and those few Jews who managed to leave their homes before the occupation.
It should be noted that the non-Jewish population of Pushkin suffered colossal losses. First, the Germans did not really know who to kill and whom to have mercy on. The invaders could shoot any Soviet person for the most insignificant offense, or even just like that. Secondly, the epidemiological situation in the city worsened, and famine began. Many residents were even forced to work for the Germans in order to receive the coveted ration cards. It is noteworthy that some of those who went to the service of the Germans, risking their lives, were very beneficial to the cause of victory. Such people had much more opportunities than ordinary residents of the occupied territories, so they could help rescue captured Jews. And such examples were far from isolated.
The extermination of the Jewish population of the Leningrad region continued throughout the years of the occupation. So, in January - March 1942, about 50 Jews were exterminated in Vyritsa, Gatchina region. It was in this settlement, although for a very short time, that the only Jewish ghetto in the Leningrad Region operated. The Leningrad Region at that time also included a significant part of the modern Novgorod Region. The massacres of the civilian population also continued on these lands. The Nazis destroyed the Jews of Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Borovichi, Kholm. In total, more than 2,000 Jews were killed on the territory of the Novgorod region.
The Finnish troops who occupied Karelia treated the Jewish population incomparably softer than the Germans. At least, there was no mass extermination of Jews in the territories occupied by the Finns. Perhaps such a liberal policy of the Finnish command was determined by the general course of Helsinki. The Finnish leadership, despite allied relations with Germany, refused not only to exterminate their Jews, but also to send them to concentration camps. Relatively good, in comparison with the Germans, the Finnish servicemen treated Jews and in the occupied Soviet territories.
January - February 1944The Red Army carried out the Leningrad-Novgorod operation, during which most of the Leningrad and Novgorod regions were liberated. On January 14, the troops of the Leningrad Front launched an offensive on Ropsha, on January 15 - on Krasnoe Selo, and on January 20, they destroyed a powerful enemy grouping in the Peterhof area and moved to the southwest. On January 20, 1944, Novgorod was liberated from the Nazi invaders, and at the end of January Soviet troops liberated Tosno, Krasnogvardeisk and Pushkin. On January 27, 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was completely eliminated.
After the total defeat of the German troops that blocked Leningrad and for two and a half years ruled over the territory of many districts of the Leningrad Region, the Soviet authorities began not only to restore the destroyed infrastructure, but also to investigate all the crimes committed by the Nazis in the occupied territories. In particular, the texture was raised regarding the mass destruction of Soviet citizens, including persons of Jewish nationality, communists and Komsomol members, prisoners of war, in the settlements of the Leningrad region. Thanks to the help of local residents, the investigating authorities managed to identify the main persons who collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation and participated in the genocide of the Soviet population. Those of them who survived by the time of the liberation of Pushkin and other settlements of the Leningrad region, suffered a well-deserved punishment.
