Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Photos of war atrocities in the Eastern Front

Featured in the photos the hanging of a Soviet partisan killed by the German soldiers in the occupied Russia. The partisan was called Zoya Kosmodernyanskaya.

Zoya was considered posthumously as a hero in the Soviet Union, and one of the most revered. Before dying, Zoya was tortured and soldiers took part of her clothing away. This appears in the photo highlighted on the right. She appears hanging dead too with a sign saying she was a partisan. This was the "crime" that led her to the gallows and torture.

Due to the violence of photos where one of them shows parts unfit, I just publish the link that will direct to screenshot with the images, I won't publih the photos open, link:
Zoya's hanging

The image above (with three photos) was published as a result of a discussion about why the brutality reaction of USSR against Germany after the reversal of the Nazi attack on Soviet territory, when Soviet Union went in motion to overthrow the Nazi regime in Germany

Text in Portuguese: Fotos da Guerra no Front Leste

Source: the photos were taken from the book Hitler vs Stalin - The Eastern Front in Photographs, pp. 71-72; Carlton Books, 2002
Authors: John Erickson, Ljubica Erickson

Read also: June 22, 1941

10 comments:

  1. As far as I know, this is the most graphic account of the torture and is based on NKVD sources:

    http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc0504/zoya.htm

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  2. I think now I can't look at the notes in the end of the book, but here is the link with the book online quoted above:
    Hitler versus Stalin - The WWII on the Eastern Front in Photographs

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  3. The exact descriptions of the photos (taken from the book above):

    "Right
    Public hangings such as these became more frequent, even routine. Bodies were left hanging in public places as a deterrent to members of the resistance, partisans and those displaying "anti-German" sentiments or committing "anti-German" acts. A man was hanged, suspected of having punctured German tyres. He was hanged along with another, unknown, man. Both were left hanging for three days in full view. No one was allowed to cut the bodies down"


    "Left
    German soldiers hang Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a member of the Komsomol, a volunteer for active service, who was sent behind German lines as part of a sabotage unit. She was taken prisoner while attempting to blow up a German ammunition dump. She was stripped and tortured to the extent that even some German soldiers were sickened. Covered in blood and half dead, she was taken to the gallows with a placard around her neck denouncing her as a partisan. Zoya posthumously became a decorated Hero of the Soviet Union and aninspiration for poems and films."


    "Left
    Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, mutilated. On New Year's Eve, drunken German troops pulied her body off the gallows and stabbed and hacked it. During the night, local inhabitants ran a terrible risk by taking the mutilated corpse away and digging a grave in frozen earth."

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  4. “. . . Now two Poles came in, dressed only in their trousers, and the girls cried out at their sight. They quickly grabbed the first of the girls, and bent her backwards over the edge of the table until her joints cracked. I was close to passing out as one of them took his knife and, before the very eyes of the other girls, cut off her right breast. He paused for a moment, then cut off the other side. I have never heard anyone scream as desperately as that girl. After this operation he drove his knife into her abdomen several times, which again was accompanied by the cheers of the Russians.”

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  5. That looks like an excerpt from the "Leonora Geier" propaganda tale about a Soviet massacre that is supposed to have happened in Neustettin on a date long before the Soviet army reached Neustettin, was discovered due to a supposed German counterattack that never took place and was never used by Goebbels for a propaganda show even though it would have been ideal for this purpose (much better than the Nemmersdorf massacre).

    A detailed analysis of this myth can be found here.

    Funny how Hitler's willing defense attorneys reject evidence to Nazi crimes, however solid, while uncritically believing accounts of Soviet atrocities, however dubious.

    And no, I'm not saying that the Soviet Army committed no atrocities against German civilians. Read the HC Reference thread Red Army Crimes on German Soil 1944/45

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  6. Just out of curiosity, did the Germans have mobile photo developing labs (presumably the forward intelligence units must have had them) or did ordinary soldiers have to wait until home leave to develop these snaps?

    Pretty convenient photos, if the Germans hadn't actually taken them, would the Soviets have found it useful to invent them?

    BTW, may I welcome you all to Rodoh3.yuku.com?

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  7. BTW of was suggesting the sexually provocative close-ups, not the generic hanging photos.

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  8. I see the cowardly rabbit from New Zealand is again trying to gain attention. By writing shit, as usual. He knows no better.

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  9. Zoya was executed for participating in partisan warfare and sabotage.

    ReplyDelete

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