Vinnytsia massacre


The Vinnytsia massacre was a mass execution of between 9,000 and 11,000 people in the Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia by the Soviet secret police NKVD during the Great Purge or Yezhovshchina in 1937–1938. Mass graves in Vinnytsia were discovered during the German occupation of Ukraine in 1943. The investigation of the site first conducted by the international Katyn Commission coincided with the discovery of a similar mass murder site of Polish prisoners of war in Katyn. As the Germans utilized this evidence of Communist terror to discredit the Soviet Union internationally, it became one of the better researched sites of the politically motivated NKVD massacres among many in Ukraine.

History

Massacre

Most of the victims buried at Vinnytsia were killed using a.22 calibre bullet fired into the back of the neck. Due to the small calibre of the bullet, most victims were shot twice, and at least 78 of them were shot three times; 395 of the victims found there had their skulls broken in addition to traces of gunshot trauma. Almost all men whose remains were excavated had their hands tied. Older women were dressed in some form of clothing, whereas younger victims were buried naked.
The executions were clandestine; the families were not informed of their relatives' fate. Personal belongings, documents and trial documentation were not preserved and instead were buried in a separate pit not far from the mass graves.
Later, after an investigation, the Germans determined the Soviets were responsible for the massacre.

The investigation commission

The first examinations of the exhumed bodies were made by German, Ukrainian, and Russian doctors such as professor Gerhard Schrader of the University of Halle-Wittenberg, docent Doroshenko of Vinnytsia, and professor Malinin of Krasnodar, respectively. The excavations started in May 1943 at three different locations: the fruit orchard in the west, the central cemetery, and the People's Park. Most of the bodies were found in the fruit orchard. Altogether, 91 mass graves were discovered at the three different locations, and 9,432 bodies were exhumed; 149 of them were women. The excavations at the People's Park were not finished, though many more bodies were thought to be buried there.
After a preliminary investigation conducted by Professor Schrader's team, two teams of medical examiners were invited — one international and the other made up of 13 experts from different universities in Nazi Germany. An international commission of experts in anatomy and forensic pathology was invited from 11 countries in Europe. The experts were the following:
The international commission visited the mass graves between July 13 and July 15, 1943. The German commission completed its report on July 29, 1943. Both commissions determined that almost all of the victims were executed by two shots in the back of the head between 1937–1938.
468 bodies were identified by people of Vinnytsia and the surroundings; the other 202 were identified on the basis of documents and evidence found in the graves. Most bodies that were identified this way naturally were Ukrainians; there were also 28 bodies that were identified as ethnic Poles. Naturally, there were no Jews there to identify their relatives among the corps, although the percentage of them had to be very high, given that victims were the result of the 1937-38 party cleansings.

Later history

Besides the international expert commission, several other international delegations visited the sites in mid-1943. Among them were politicians and other officials from Bulgaria, Denmark, Greece, Finland, and Sweden. Photos and results of the investigation were published in many countries in Europe, and were used by Germany in the propaganda war against the Soviet Union.
Most of the bodies were reburied after a burial service led by metropolit Vissarion of Odessa. The service was also attended by many other Orthodox bishops and foreign church officials.
A monument was also erected to the "Victims of Stalinist Terror". Later the Soviet authorities rededicated the monument to the "Victims of Nazi Terror", finally completely removing it and creating an entertainment park in its place. In the last ten years a new monument has been constructed at the burial site in the park; it only refers to "victims of totalitarianism". During Soviet times, information about the massacre was disseminated and investigated by the Ukrainian diaspora in the West. The mass murder in Vinnytsia returned as a critical topic in Ukraine in 1988.

Literature