For the name of Lenin
2 February The 1943 of the year ended the Battle of Stalingrad, and our troops went with a liberation march through Russia. Opened a terrible picture of atrocities and crimes against civilians. The Georgian tragedy took place on three Don farms, which the Germans decided to destroy, revenging for the fact that on December 23 of 1942, they lost several of their soldiers in battle with a small group of Soviet intelligence officers.
The next day, the Nazis announced that they would shoot 10 civilians for every killed person. People were shot for three days. Total killed 284 resident. By killing civilians, the Germans no longer considered them.
“The terrible tragedy was experienced in December 1942 by the Georgians farm. Taking advantage of the usual fact of wartime killing two German soldiers during an exchange of fire with our intelligence, the invaders sent a punitive expedition to the farm. The fascists drove the inhabitants of the farms of Markin, Nagorny, Gruzinova into one farm (Gruzinov) and began a massacre, ”wrote a few days after the liberation of Morozov district, Don writer, journalist V.S. Molozhavenko in one of his articles. At the beginning of the forty-third, the whole country learned about the Georgian tragedy, after reading the article by the well-known publicist of the war years Ilya Ehrenburg: "... Noble fury boiled like a wave."
Gruzinov farm is located in the Morozovsky district of the Rostov region, just on the way to Stalingrad.
Today, for several days, we remember the 284 people who were shot by fascist German gangsters, and tell them to our children. To remember. To protect the world on earth.
The team of teachers and students of the Georgian school, before the start of classes, always holds mourning lines of memory on these tragic days. Schoolchildren are holding a piece of paper with the names and surnames of 284 who were shot by fellow villagers in those days. In the school museum - a guard of honor.
The fascists shot over two hundred civilians, in whose memory a memorial was erected in the farm. Every year, descendants of innocently affected farmers come here to honor their memory with a minute of silence.
The shooting took three days: 26, 27 and 28 December. Men of twelve and older were separated and retracted to abandoned wells. In the eyes of children, wives and mothers, the Nazis forced them to lie down one by one in a pit. The executioner, a non-commissioned officer, twice shot at each man. Then the next victim was put side by side - and again two shots. When a full row was recruited from the dead, a row was made from a machine gun in a row.
Like an enraged gang, fascist fiends rushed about the farmsteads. They broke into houses and exterminated entire families.
In the farm Gruzinova killed 38-year-old kolkhoznitsa F.N. Burkina and her children: a half year old Nyushu, a five-year-old Marusya, a seven-year-old Tay.
In the village of Nagorny, the family of 65-year-old Illya Vasilyevich Balakhtin was shot: wife (64 years), daughter Olya (14 years); Volodya’s son (11 years) and five evacuated women who were staying with them. Killing Volodya, the executioners declared that he was being destroyed because he bears the name of Lenin.
Fiends killed by AS Pozdnyakova and his grandchildren, Komsomol members, 75-year-old husband
M.T. Markina, a deaf old man, and her 95-year-old blind sister Tatiana. This woman was bedridden, but the Nazis did not stop.
After all, there is practically no such family in Gruzinovo, which would not have been touched by those terrible events.
A native of the Gruzinova farm, 80-year-old Valentina Kirillovna Semikina, comes annually from Morozovsk to go to the places of death of innocently executed countrymen and worship their dust. She remembered that she was not 11 years, when the raid began. The fascists rushed to the farm in rage, bursting into each house and exterminating entire families.
At first, the inhabitants of the Markin's farm were driven to the place of execution;
“The Germans kicked us out of the basement and, together with the others, escorted us to a pit in which the bodies of the killed farmers were already piled up. At that moment, when Olga Arsentevna Kapchunova’s mother was standing with four children on the edge of a pit, one of the Germans gave the order to stop the shooting, and they miraculously survived. But we lost the Balakhtin family from the farm of Nagorny, our close relatives. There were eight of them. All killed in those days. Their house and cattle were burned to the ground.
Primary school teacher of lyceum №1 V.I. Varypaleva, born in the Nagorny farm, said that her uncle, Mikhail Martynovich Prudnikov, the mother’s brother, a Komsomol member, is on the list of 284 residents who were shot. He was 15 years old at the time of the tragedy.
Together with his grandmother, mother and younger 12-year-old brother Leon, Michael hid in the basement, leaving his room only occasionally. However, the Nazis still found a family. They expected the same fate as the rest.
Valentina Ivanovna’s mom asked the women, standing in the same line with the children, to surround the youngest Leon, dressed as a woman, in order not to be noticed. The elder, who was in the other line of men and old men, could not be hidden. As a result, Mikhail was shot in front of his mother and grandmother.
Leon survived.
According to the stories of the surviving mother, the terrible picture of the shooting was attempted to be recreated by the native of the Gruzinova farm present here, who now lives in the city of Morozovsk L.V. Afanasyevskaya (nee Kryzhko):
- Standing by the pit, people heard that men would be the first to shoot. Someone in the crowd said that among women - 14-year-old boy. One of the fascists heard these words, led Anatoly Gladchenko out of the column and in the presence of his mother Vera Savelyevna Gladchenko (my grandmother) and her sister (my mother), coolly shot a teenager. Grandma rushed after him. Seeing this, the fascist shot her too. Mom is not touched.
Komsomolets Ivan Ivankov, coming up to the pit, shouted:
- Shoot, you bastards! They will avenge us! All of you will die of retribution of the Russian people!
- All of you die, you bastards! - shouted and Nikolai Balakhtin.
- All the same, our come! - Mikhail Kapchunov shouted.
Later, these words, like a spell, were transmitted to each other by the surviving Georgians.
Not for the first year, the residents of Morozovsk, T.I. Matseyko with his son Konstantin.
Tamara Ionovna was also born in Gruzinova. She told about the tragic fate of her family:
- My father Ion Sidorovich Gladchenko, called up in 1941, went through the whole war: he fought with a radio operator near Rostov-on-Don, participated in the battles for Kharkov, was captured, reached Berlin. For a long time letters did not come from him. He returned home only in 1946. Grandpa Sidor Yakovlevich Gladchenko was 89 years old when he was shot. He well rolled felt boots and taught this son Jonah. Having learned about his skills, the fascists ordered him to make several pairs. To refuse them was like death. The grandfather made as many felt boots as he was ordered, and a few days later he was also shot dead by lyutrovich German soldiers in front of his grandmother Alyona, who, after what she saw, lost her mind. Grandmother Alain and mother Praskovya Gavrilovna, who were standing in the queue, did not have time to kill, as our scouts-liberators approached. Our women immediately ran home, harnessed a cow, put their and other farm children in a sledge, as much as they could fit, and went to Morozovsk, to their relatives. One of the relatives went on foot after them. But as soon as she went out to the hamlet, to the mound, she saw an old icon of the Mother of God on the road, and decided to return home. The Lord saved her, she survived. A train with children somehow got to the city of Morozovsk. They settled down with a relative in the upper room and immediately fell asleep. Only grandmother (my mom's mother) could not sleep a wink. Indeed, in the next room there were junk Germans with machine guns. The trouble went near. Fortunately, by the morning of the Nazis in the house was gone.
Our saved us from execution
Several years ago, Valentina Kirillovna Semikina, a native of the Gruzinova farm, now living in the town of Morozovsk, decided to perpetuate the memory of her relatives, including many civilians who were victims of fascism, and soldiers who laid down their heads on the battlefields of the fatal forties. Looking at the photographs of different years that had turned yellow from time, one day she unwittingly caught herself thinking that it would be good to ennoble each one: some enlarged, a frame for the originals or their photocopies and placed in the house as a pedigree tree. Having counted six generations in the family according to the photos available, Valentina Kirillovna easily distributed the photos from the family archive in chronological order - from the year to the present. The solid part of her hard work has already been done. Successfully made photocopies (today their 1907) within the framework is becoming more and more.
All in all, Balakhtin senior had four children.
With difficulty restraining tears, Valentina Kirillovna recalls about her country childhood, scorched by war. Looking at the pictures with native faces, she seems to be reading a book of the past on them. Father Kirill Prokofievich Kapchunov, returning from the civil war, worked on the collective farm as farm manager, and mother Olga Arsentievna (nee Balakhtin) worked without a backbone in field farming, as evidenced by the medal "For Valiant Labor."
In the 1941 year, like most men of the Gruzinova farm, Kirill Prokofyevich went to the front. The order bearer Kirill Prokofyevich went through the whole war. On the front of the service did not cease to remind the sick, cold feet in the wartime. It is no coincidence that until the end of his days his father wore felt boots. The front-line soldiers were his brothers, Egor, missing, and Daniel. While her husband fought, his wife tried hard to feed her five children. Valentina was her assistant in all matters, both at home and in the field, often replacing her mother at work in the steppe, especially during harvesting. More than once Olga Arsentevna said, turning to Vale: "Daughter, God sent you to me."
But only God knows how much strength in fact was taken away by this exhausting physical work from a weak-looking but strong spirit of a teenage girl.
The terrible tragedy was experienced by the Balakhtin family in December 1942, during the occupation. The victims of the mass execution were the innocently killed 14-year-old sister of Olga Arsentevna Uliana, 11-year-old brother Vladimir and 17-year-old son Vasily. Their photos are also stored today in the archive of Valentina Kirillovna.
Valentina Kirillovna has not yet turned 11 years, when the Nazis began a raid, suddenly burst into the farm Georgians:
“The Germans kicked us out of the basement and, together with the others, escorted us to a pit in which the bodies of the killed farmers already lay. At that moment, when mother Olga Arsentevna Kapchunova was standing with four children on the edge of the pit, our partisans suddenly appeared here and stopped the shooting. We miraculously survived. It was not easy for people in the first post-war years.
Pupils who attended school in 1946-47, as described by Valentina Kirillovna, wore what they had to do: overcoats, sweatshirts and even German coats and boots not in size, rejoicing in the fact that they could go to classes. This is clearly seen in the photo from December 27 1946 of the year with the depiction of fifth-grade students of the seven-year Gruzinovsky school, including V.K. Semikin. The fate of Olga Arsentevna’s brothers — the front-line soldiers of Ivan, Prokofy, and Vasily Balakhtin — was not easy. According to their niece, Valentina Kirillovna, mother’s elder brother, Uncle Van, born in 1909, is known to have served in the army from July 1941 to May 1942, was a gunner in the 105 Cavalry Regiment. Before the end of the war, Private Balakhtin was in a concentration camp. In his native Morozovsk, after his release from captivity, he returned to an emaciated, depressed, silent man. Ivan Arsentievich did not like very much when relatives asked him questions about the past.
Preserved in the album VK. Semikina and photos of mom's middle brother, Uncle Proshi, who was called to the front right at the beginning of the war. According to the stories of a fellow villager with whom he fought in Ukraine, Prosha was surrounded by driving a “lorry” that exploded from an enemy projectile that hit her. Relatives still do not know anything about PA Balakhtine.
Lieutenant Vasily Balakhtin met the victory in Germany, where he continued to serve after the war. This is evidenced by the postcard sent by him from Germany (14 August 1946 of the year) with a view of the historic castle, where uncle Vasya loved to go on excursions along with brother-soldiers.
The first husband of Valentina Kirillovna, a native of the Volgograd region, artilleryman Nikolai Vasilyevich Pankratov smelled gunpowder in the war. But with special excitement she recalls the spouse about the battle path of her second husband, the Battle of Kursk, Fedor Grigorievich Semikin. In 1942, when the fascist invaders invaded the territory of Morozov district, four guys, including Fyodor Semikin, decided to flee from Morozovsk to the front line. They managed to get to the city of Kalach-on-Don, Volgograd region. Unfortunately, during the crossing of one of the guys caught the enemy bullet. The other three, among them 17-year-old Fedor Semikin, arrived safely in the Chelyabinsk region, from where in December 1942 and were called up to the Red Army.
In the summer of 1943, Fedor Grigorievich participated in a crucial battle at the Oryol-Kursk Bulge, where he showed unparalleled heroism, bravery and courage. Such honors as the Order of the Patriotic War of the First Degree, the Order of the Red Star, the Zhukov Medal, the Medal "For the Victory over Germany" speak about his merits before the Motherland, courage and fortitude.
However, the soldier, who was constantly eager to fight, did not have to fight for long. September 15 1944, the commander of the mortar crew of the 415 Infantry Regiment Sergeant F.G. Semikin received a severe splinter wound to the foot, and on the same day in the evacuation hospital No. XXUMX, his right leg was amputated. After the treatment, Fedor Grigorievich returned home to Morozovsk. The invalid came from the war soon and his elder brother Vasily. Every year, the widow of the war veteran V.K. Semikina visits the places of death of his countrymen, who were innocently shot during the days of the Georgian tragedy, as well as the burial places of relatives and friends, reflecting the attack of the enemy hordes, not forgetting to bow low to their dust and leave fresh flowers.
stay alive
Ivan stood in the back row. To a huge snowdrift, charted under the barn, it was within reach. The guy squatted on his heels, and when the Germans got distracted, he quickly climbed under the barn, raking his tracks with snow. Fortunately, the blizzard was played serious. My heart was pounding: suddenly they would find it, they would shoot it on the spot!
Thoughts were confused in the head, the body was frozen, the soul ached. How not to fall into the hands of the Germans? How to quickly calm down the mother - Anisia Pavlovna, who probably shed tears for her eldest son? She already could not find a place for herself, because her husband, Nikolai Kuzmich, was taken to the front at the very beginning of the war, and she alone had to raise five children. Vanya was the only maternal support and hope.
So he survived and saw the captured Germans and Romanians.
Christmas in the New, 1943, year Ivan Basenko met with his mother, brothers and sisters. In the spring I got a tractor and worked with full efficiency in spring sowing. And in May, a summons from the recruiting office, and the Soviet Army received a new young soldier, ready to fight the Nazis to the last breath. Artilleryman Ivan Basenko began his front-line career in Saratov, after which he participated in the battles for Ukraine, liberated Ditch But, Shepetovka and Lviv. In the battles for Poland showed his knowledge and received the post of gunsmith. On the battlefield, he simultaneously served six artillery guns and managed to help the neighboring battery. Already after the war, Ivan Basenko told that he especially remembers how they covered the crossing of our troops through the Vistula.
Soviet artillery did not allow the fascist planes to bomb the bridge, and the Germans decided to open the locks. It was a real nightmare: people, horses, guns and ammunition were instantly flooded with icy water. Only a few managed to get out of the flood. All those who survived were seriously and for a long time sick ... Another vivid memory of the front-line soldier who was awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War, medals "For Military Merit", "For Victory over Germany" and many others - a meeting with Marshal Konev. Ivan Stepanovich was respected for his warm, truly fatherly attitude to the soldiers, and he was not called a commander otherwise. Meeting with the young front-line soldiers, the marshal thanked them for their courage and selflessness, for the steadfastness of the spirit and the desire to win. In March forty-fourth, I again had to cover the crossing. This time through the Oder, much closer to Berlin. Then there were the destruction of the Breslav group, the Great Victory, two years of service on the Romanian border, and finally the long-awaited demobilization.
At home, Ivan Nikolaevich Basenko arrived only in the spring of forty-seven, breathed in the smell of the earth awakening from hibernation, hugged the aged mother, the hungry, but most importantly, the living brothers and sisters, read the funeral for his father and realized that he would never leave his family again and small homeland! Here he built a house for himself and his wife, a young elementary school teacher, Claudia Mikhailovna, with whom they lived for almost sixty years and raised two daughters, Lydia and Tatiana. They always come to worship the monument to their countrymen.
Miraculously survived
Peter Antipovich Markin miraculously survived. He said that on the way to the place of execution for some reason one of the German soldiers carefully examined several times, maybe the boy reminded him of someone, and therefore the German sent the gun to the bushes and gestured the boy to run. Peter survived. But his many friends, with whom they played on the streets of the village, were brutally shot, along with their relatives, about three wells, where they drove people to be shot. But some were killed right on the road. And when parts of the Soviet army entered the liberated farms, a terrible picture of the execution of civilians appeared.
The most amazing thing is that after a time, when the German prisoners were silently standing and watching, through their farm that survived the terrible tragedy, the German prisoners were silent. They experienced their grief with dignity.
In 1957, a monument to the Victims of German Fascism was erected in Gruzinov Farm, where the following words were carved: "Good people, remember: we loved life, our country and you, dear ones. We died at the hands of the fascist executioner."
And there, where the soldiers-liberators died, monuments were also erected.
Brigadier Commissioner S.Shatilov. EXISTING ARMY. (By telegraph):
“The right bank of the Don. A little time has passed since the fascist hordes broke in, but rivers of the blood of innocent people have already been shed, dozens of cities and villages have been burned and destroyed. The flames of fires, without ceasing, rage in the flowering Pridonsky steppes. For over three days, the village of Shvyrevo, set on fire by the Germans for no reason, was ablaze. When one house was burning down, the Nazis immediately lit another, and so, house by house, they burned the whole village.
In the village of Khvoshchevatka the Germans staged a drunken orgy. All night they dragged young women and girls out of their homes and, in the light of the conflagration, raped them with whole gangs. The next morning, at the end of a terrible night, they shot the first inhabitants of the village who came to hand by 60. Having captured another settlement, the Germans, first of all, committed a monstrous massacre of wounded Red Army soldiers and local citizens who were in the hospital. The monsters dragged helpless people from their beds, threw them into the basement, and then, after pouring on kerosene, they burned everyone alive. After our troops drove the Germans out of this point, the fighters found charred corpses in the basement above 500 ...
Citizens Ivan Fyodorovich and Praskovya Ilyinichna Vlasov, who fled from a city occupied by the Germans, say:
- Pogroms do not stop day and night. Drunk Germans rush into apartments, rob, rape and kill people for nothing. On the first day after the arrival of the Germans, we were robbed completely. The Germans searched the chests and took everything to the thread, even our little granddaughter's underwear ...
This is a typical picture for all the villages and cities in the basin of the Don, temporarily occupied by the Germans. In one city, Hitler's officers, in order not to bother to rob about trifles, ordered that the entire population leave the city for the next two days to evacuate, taking with them all the products, clothing and valuables. For non-compliance with this order, shot on the spot. When the inhabitants with the things went out of the city, they took everything away from them and drove them back with butts. In the village of Kaverin, the Germans robbed differently. Here the population was asked to leave the village, and taking anything with them was strictly forbidden. When the village was empty, the Germans, one by one, cleared all the houses, and what could not be taken away, furniture, for example, was destroyed.
Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, driven to the Don, are not inferior to the Nazis in cruelty and greed. The 3 platoon of the 5 company of the Hungarian infantry regiment 38 regiment Joseph Fabry, captured, showed during the interrogation: “In my eyes, three senior Russian men dressed in civilian clothes were beaten to death by officers at the order. Then they were dragged into a field and shot. These men were only guilty, that they, as the officer said, disrespectfully treated him. ”
In the village of First Sentry Hungarians killed over thirty women and children to intimidate the population. In the villages of Verkhnye Ozerki, Protasovo, Gremyachye and other Hungarian soldiers took away all the bread, clothing and household items from the residents. The Hungarians hijacked the villagers of Tychyna and Selyavnoe where it was unknown, and looted all things and property.
Hitler's gangsters set out to destroy the Soviet people. A letter was found in the murdered German soldier, a certain Hans, in which his friend Dreyer writes: “The main thing is to beat all the Russians without mercy, so that this swine people would rather end.” The facts of the last days, which took place in the regions of the Don that were temporarily captured by the Germans, show the devilish sequence in which the Nazis carry out their cannibalistic program.
Several Germans, having broken into the village of Vasilyevka, demanded from the collective farmer Tatyana Kuleshova milk. Kuleshov could not do this simply because she did not have a cow. Then the Germans, laughing, set fire to Kuleshov's hut, took the woman in their arms and, after swinging, threw themselves into the fire. Kolkhoznitsa burned alive under the guffaw and hoot of Hitler's bastards. In the village of Podgornoye, after robbing the population, the Germans after wild humiliation shot the collective farmer Konarov Zakhar Dmitrievich 45 years, Danilin Mikhail Panteleevich 19 years and Danilin Sergey Panteleevich 16 years. In the village of Pisarevka, German pilots barbarously shot women and children riding on 15 carts. On the First May collective farm, a German officer, settling down for the night in the house of the collective farmer Sitnik, shot the owner of the house, his wife and child. In another settlement, Evdokia Kazakova, the mother of three children, refused to give the last loaf of bread to things. Snatching the bread out of Kazakova’s hands, the fascist monsters beat a defenseless woman half to death, and then in front of her eyes they smashed all three guys with head butts.
The immense suffering of our brothers and sisters who had fallen under the fascist yoke, further inflamed in the hearts of the defenders of the Don a sacred hatred of the enemy. Now, more than ever, every fighter understands that every step we take back brings death and torment to new hundreds of Soviet people. Now, more than ever, every fighter with all the forces of his soul seeks revenge on the Nazis for their evil deeds. Soon already two months, not giving more to the mercy of the enemy a single piece of land in the Voronezh region, our fighters every day stubbornly and mercilessly grind the Nazi regiments and divisions. But this is only the beginning of our calculation with the fascists for the blood and suffering of the Soviet people tortured by them. The German invaders must be destroyed to the last; the fascist beast must not have life on Soviet soil. "
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