Text taken from a Telegram post by otryadkovpaka
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] The FSB in the Smolensk region released an archive about the executions of Poles by the Nazis and the falsification of the Katyn case. Copies of unique historical documents were transferred to the OGKU "State Archive of Contemporary History of the Smolensk Region" as part of the project "Without a Statute of Limitations"
Start. Part 1.
This declassified archive includes working documents from 1944-1945 of the Smersh counterintelligence departments - certificates, interrogation reports, intelligence data, special messages to the Center.
The most interesting part of the declassified archive is the protocol of interrogations of Poles🇵🇱 who served in the Wehrmacht in auxiliary and construction military units of Smolensk and the Smolensk region.
For example, a native of Poland, ethnic Pole Eduard Potkansky, who served at the Krasny Bor station in the Smolensk region, in a separate labor battalion, testified as follows during interrogations.
“In the summer of 1943, the Germans decided to show the participants of the working battalion the graves of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. According to the Germans, up to 12 thousand executed Polish officers lay in these graves, and up to 3 thousand more people are in another place, and these graves have not yet been opened “
What struck him,” Potkansky recalled, was that near the graves lay officer belongings, personal letters and documents of officers, as well as Polish cash. Moreover, what most struck those who examined these “evidence” was that the cash was brand new, absolutely not from everyday circulation. And even more so - not after being in the ground for 4 years, since 1939, when, according to the Germans, the NKVD officers shot Polish officers.
Another prisoner of war, Roman Kowalski, who also inspected this mass grave in the Katyn forest, testified that “from the majority of the corpses of those executed [it was] clear that these were very recent victims. In the published lists of executed Polish officers in Katyn, many of our working battalion found their own among the names of the dead acquaintances arrested even earlier by the Gestapo and sent to concentration camps in Germany."
The administrator of Russian workers at the Focke-Wulf plant, a certain Smektal, testified that in April 1943 he was appointed as a delegate of the commission to investigate the massacre of Polish soldiers and officers in Katyn forest.
“One of the leaders of the Pozno SD (security service of the Reichsführer SS - TASS note), Sturmbannführer Gepner, had a conversation with the commission in which he warned that their trip to Katyn had propaganda purposes and that upon returning from there they should declare that they had personally seen 12 thousand corpses of Polish officers. <...> [After returning] the SD obliged the members of the commission to speak before meetings of Polish workers with propaganda reports about the trip to Katyn. The abstracts of the reports were previously edited by the SD"
Also, from Smektal's testimony:
"As a former judicial worker, I was it is clear from the behavior of these “witnesses” that they were specially prepared by the SD... The corpses shown to the commission did not look as if they had lain in the ground for several years... The clothes had not decayed, but on the corpse [of the Polish military leader,General of the Brigade Bronislav] Bogatyrevich, the lower part of his face with a mustache and goatee has been preserved"
The truth is slowly but surely making its way.
More from regnum.ru
FSB declassifies the archive on the Nazi falsification of the Katyn Affair
The Directorate of the Federal Security Service for the Smolensk Region has declassified archival documents about crimes committed by the Nazis in the region during the Great Patriotic War, including materials about the executions of Poles and the falsification of the Katyn Affair by the secret services of the Third Reich.
The documents were transferred to the OGKU “State Archive of Contemporary History of the Smolensk Region” as part of the project “Without a Statute of Limitations,” TASS reports.
The archive includes certificates, intelligence data and special messages from the Smersh counterintelligence agency, which date back to 1944–1945. Most of the documents consist of protocols of interrogations of Poles who served with the Nazis in the Smolensk region, as well as forensic expert of the Budapest City Royal Court Imre Sechodi and a member of the commission investigating the murder of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest Boleslav Smektal and other involved.
...
As reported by IA Regnum, the FSB regularly publishes archival documents about the events of the Great Patriotic War. Thus, in February, materials about the brutal execution of underground members of the Young Guard by the Nazis in the winter of 1943 were declassified. In particular, copies of interrogation protocols of participants in the execution of Oleg Koshevoy, Lyubov Shevtsova and other Young Guards were made public.
On April 11, the FSB declassified documents according to which the German punitive detachments, which the Nazis formed after the occupation of the Smolensk region during the Great Patriotic War, massacred civilians. In particular, more than 1 thousand people were shot in Smolensk, as follows from declassified archival documents.
On January 19, the Russian FSB directorate for the Arkhangelsk region declassified the archival file against a participant in Nazi punitive operations, a native of the Kherson region, Edgard Zeel. He and his accomplices spent them during the Great Patriotic War in the Kamenets-Podolsk region of Ukraine.
According to documents, in January 1944, policeman Seel, together with an SS detachment, took part in a punitive operation against Soviet partisans and civilians in the village of Konevka.
On October 4, 2023, the FSB declassified an archive about the cooperation of the Poles with the Germans in the Stalag-1A concentration camp. According to the documents, the Poles in the Nazi concentration camp earned the right from the Germans to occupy the best places. They were appointed to manage areas - the dining room, bathhouse, warehouse. By currying favor, the Poles received good positions.
Related from regnum.ru
FSB declassified documents on mass executions of residents of the Smolensk region by the Nazis
The German punitive detachments that the Nazis formed after the occupation of the Smolensk region during the Great Patriotic War massacred civilians. In particular, more than 1 thousand people were shot in Smolensk, as follows from declassified archival documents.
The regional FSB department declassified the materials and transferred them to the State Archive of Contemporary History of the Smolensk Region as part of the project “Without a Statute of Limitations.” Among them there are testimonies of German tankman Karl Schneider and prisoner of war Heinz Winkler.
“In 1941, our regiment gathered more than one thousand local residents on the outskirts of Smolensk <...> [They] were stripped and took off their shoes, then shot with automatic weapons. Among those shot were women and children,” TASS quotes Schneider as saying.
According to Winkler's testimony, the Wehrmacht military massacred the inhabitants after occupying Smolensk. Gestapo officials and SS troops passing through the city were especially atrocious. At the slightest suspicion, they took entire families out of town and shot them, as stated in a special message from the counterintelligence agency SMERSH.
Several thousand prisoners of war died in the winter of 1941–1942 in the Smolensk camp from cold and hunger.
Captured corporal Hans Farber, who served in a punitive company, spoke about the massacre of residents of one of the villages near Yelnya. In March 1942, partisans settled in the village. The Nazis boarded up houses and set them on fire, resulting in the deaths of residents and 15 partisans who did not have time to hide in the forest. Farber admitted that he was unable to name the number of Soviet citizens killed by the “firing squad,” since “it is significant.”
German units entered Smolensk on July 16, 1941. Soviet troops liberated the region in early October 1943.
As Regnum reported, the FSB regularly publishes archival documents about the events of the Great Patriotic War. In February, materials about the brutal execution of underground members of the Young Guard by the Nazis in the winter of 1943 were declassified. In particular, copies of interrogation protocols of participants in the execution of Oleg Koshevoy, Lyubov Shevtsova and other Young Guards were made public.