In Germany, unknown photos surfaced about the Nazi war crimes in the USSR

January 27 2011 1

Law enforcement authorities of Germany have begun to study the new data on the crimes of the Wehrmacht during the Great Patriotic War, committed in the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union, ITAR-TASS reports, citing German media.

The investigation is conducted by the Dortmund Prosecutor’s Office and the Office of the Criminal Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was started after early January 2010, an envelope with 50 photographs "containing documentary evidence of violence against Jews and prisoners of war" was delivered to the court of the West German city of Eschweiler by a person who wished to remain anonymous.

There is reason to assume that the photographs were taken in the temporarily occupied territories of the USSR.

Some of these photographs show scenes of hanging prisoners and civilians, as well as the bodies of the executed, lying on the ground and being loaded into army trucks, Chief Military Prosecutor Andreas Brendel told The Daily Telegraph.

"Some of these photographs depict soldiers of the German army, but it is not clear whether they were directly involved in these killings," Brendel said. He also did not claim that the victims of the killings were precisely Jews, other civilians or Soviet prisoners of war, confirming only that the photographs were taken in the summer or autumn of 1941.

Documentary evidence was discovered back in the 1960s in an apartment building in the center of Eschweiler when repairs were made there.

The Dortmund Prosecutor’s Office and the North Rhine-Westphalia Criminal Investigation Office are now primarily engaged in searching for people who could provide information regarding the photo archive found.

So far, it has not been possible to establish either the crime scene or the exact time of the commission of acts of violence. Neither the persons depicted in the photographs nor the units in which they could serve have been identified.