Russia Unveils New Documents About Mass Murder Of 214 Children In Nazi-Occupied Yeysk

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th October, 2019) The office of Russia's Federal Security Service in the Krasnodar Territory has published for the first time documents about 214 orphanage pupils murdered in the Nazi-occupied Russian city of Yeysk in 1942.

RIA Novosti publishes three Soviet-era reports on the study of mass graves and exhumed bodies, as well as a list of the Names of the killed children.

At the beginning of the World War Two, the orphanage in question, including 300 children and their teachers, was evacuated from Simferopol in Crimea to Yeysk in Krasnodar Territory. Yet, in late summer 1942, the city was occupied by Nazi Germany.

In October, several trucks drove up to the house where the children lived. The children were loaded into the vehicle and transported to a burial place. Fifteen minutes later, they were dead.

The first Soviet official report on the issue dated 15 April, 1943, says that the children were buried alive.

"Upon careful examination, we found no traces of gunshot wounds or injuries, all skull bones were intact.

All this once again confirmed that the children had been buried alive," the document said.

The batch of documents, which are published now for the first time, are dated August 1943. They contain more details, including witness testimony.

The reports say that those buried in the mass grave were children with physical disabilities. Some of them had spinal curvature, others had shortened limbs or lacked some body parts.

The conclusion of these reports differs from the one made by the April 1943 document. It argues that the children died in the back of the trucks from exhaust fumes. In support of this version of the events, experts cite the testimony of a witness who did not hear the children's cries during the vehicles' unloading.

The list of orphanage pupils contains their names, dates of birth and so-called nationalities: Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Georgians, Czechs, Tatars and Jews. Among those killed, there were also at least two Soviet children whose reported "nationality" was German. Each of the children had a certain degree of disability.