Narrator: Marchand Steenkamp.
About the story: The Krasnodar Trial marked one of the first public prosecutions of Nazi war crimes during the Second World War. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union under Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, mass murder became a systematic tool of occupation across the Eastern Front. In cities like Krasnodar, German forces—including the Wehrmacht, SS units, Gestapo officers, and Sonderkommando 10a of Einsatzgruppe D—carried out executions, mass shootings, and gas van killings targeting Jews, Communists, partisans, and civilians. When the Red Army liberated Krasnodar in February 1943, investigators uncovered mass graves and documented evidence of atrocities, including the use of mobile gas vans. The Soviet authorities responded by organizing a military tribunal in July 1943. Unlike later Nuremberg proceedings, this trial focused primarily on Soviet collaborators who had assisted the German occupation forces in arrests, guarding prisoners, and facilitating executions. Eleven defendants stood before the court. Eight—including Vassily Tishchenko, Ivan Rechkalov, Mikhail Lastovina, Nikolai Pushkarev, Grigory Misan, Yunus Naptsok, Ivan Kotomtsev, and Ignaty Kladov—were sentenced to death by public hanging. On 18 July 1943, before a crowd of approximately 30,000 people, the executions were carried out in Krasnodar’s main square. The event was filmed and widely publicized across the Soviet Union. The Krasnodar Trial exposed the mechanisms of Nazi terror in occupied Russia and highlighted the role of collaboration in enabling mass murder. Though it did not prosecute German commanders directly, it became an early example of wartime justice, reinforcing the message that war criminals and collaborators would be held accountable.
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