Kharkov Trial
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Kharkov, Soviet Union
| Kharkov Trial | |
|---|---|
| Court | Soviet military tribunal Kharkov, Soviet Union |
| Indictment | War crimes Treason |
| Decided | 18 December 1943 |
| Case history | |
| Related action | Moscow Declarations |
The Kharkov Trial was a war crimes trial held in front of a Soviet military tribunal in December 1943 in Kharkov, Soviet Union. Defendants included one Soviet collaborator, as well as German military, police, and SS personnel responsible for implementing the occupational policies during the German–Soviet War of 1941–45. The trial was the first time that German personnel had been tried for war crimes by the Allies during and after World War II.
Units of the German Wehrmacht first occupied Kharkov on 23–24 October 1941. German forces, including the Einsatzgruppen (mobile death squads), killed tens of thousands of Jews, as well as Communists, Soviet prisoners of war, and other "undesirables". Shooting, hanging, and gas vans were used. Fifteen thousand Jews were murdered on 15 December 1941 in a mass shooting in Drobytsky Yar. The Gestapo also shot 435 patients, many of whom were elderly people and children, who were being treated at the local hospital. In March 1943, 800 wounded Red Army soldiers were shot and burned alive. Overall, the Soviets said that in the Kharkov region, the "German-fascist invaders had shot, hanged, burned alive, and poisoned by carbon monoxide gas more than 30,000 peaceful completely innocent citizens, including women, old people, and children."[1][2]
The city was temporarily retaken by the Red Army in February 1943 and then by the Wehrmacht in April 1943. Already in the spring of 1943 Soviet authorities discovered mass graves of the victims, mostly Jews. By the time that Kharkov was liberated for good in August 1943, virtually no Jews survived in the city.[1]
