A Soviet man finds the bodies of his wife and children, who were killed by a Nazi death squad. His family were among approximately 7000 murdered civilians, mostly of Jews, whose bodies were found by Soviet troops after they retook the area (Crimea, 1942).
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[The series of photos](https://imgur.com/a/iE98x/titledesc)
The Soviet man’s name is Grigory Berman.
A Soviet military report on the massacre:
>“… The Nazis chose an anti-tank ditch near the village of Bagerovo as the place of mass execution, where for three days whole families of people doomed to death were brought by car. Upon the arrival of the Red Army in Kerch, in January 1942, when examining the Bagerovsky ditch, it was found that for a kilometer in length, 4 meters wide, 2 meters deep, it was overflowing with the corpses of women, children, old people and teenagers. Near the moat were frozen pools of blood. Children’s hats, toys, ribbons, torn off buttons, gloves, bottles with nipples, boots, galoshes, along with stumps of arms and legs and other parts of the body, were also lying there. All this was spattered with blood and brains. Fascist scoundrels shot the defenseless population with explosive bullets … ”
The photographer was [Dmitry Baltermants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Baltermants). He took multiple photos of the aftermath, including [this one](https://imgur.com/a/lQ4M6Tg), which he titled “Grief”.
These murders were carried out by the SS death squad Sonderkommando 10b. Between December 1 and 3, 1941, the members of Sonderkommando 10b shot about 2,500 Jews in the trenches outside of the city. Almost all of the remaining Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the end of the month.
The troops of Einsatzkommando 10b, a subunit of death squad Einsatzgruppe D), committed their murders along with Hiwis (local collaborators in Eastern Europe. Wehrmacht troops also supported them, with their complicity varying from passively watching, to aiding and abetting (ex. assisting with pre-execution procedures), to direct participation.
At the time of this massacre, the commander of Einsatzkommando 10b was [Alois Persterer](https://imgur.com/a/AZYCPEy). Persterer was fatally shot in Salzburg, Austria on May 30, 1945. He was 35 years old.
The circumstances of his death remain unclear. Persterer was either shot during a robbery, or shot by U.S. soldiers while resisting arrest. Either way, he was dead.
As for Einsatzgruppe D as a whole, the commander was [Otto Ohlendorf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Ohlendorf). In May 1945, Ohlendorf participated in Heinrich Himmler’s escape from Flensburg. However, he was arrested along with several others in Lüneburg.
Ohlendorf testified at the Nuremberg trials. Throughout the proceedings, it became clear that he had no remorse and genuinely believed he had done absolutely nothing wrong.
>Ohlendorf: Some of the unit leaders did not carry out the liquidation in the military manner, but killed the victims singly by shooting them in the back of the neck.
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>Colonel Amen: And you objected to that procedure?
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>Ohlendorf: I was against that procedure, yes.
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>Colonel Amen: For what reason?
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>Ohlendorf: Because both for the victims and for those who carried out the executions, it was, psychologically, an immense burden to bear.
The international tribunal in Nuremberg was initially supposed to hold multiple trials, but worsening relations between the West and the East made this impossible. Nevertheless, Allied governments were allowed to try suspected war criminals in their zone.
Most war criminals under U.S. military jurisdiction were tried by a commission in the Dachau concentration camp. However, [trials were held in Nuremberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsequent_Nuremberg_trials) for their high-profile detainees. These trials became known as the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Ohlendorf was one of the defendants in the [Einsatzgruppen trial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen_trial).
At one point during his trial, Ohlendorf tried to argue that the 90,000+ murders which could be attributed to his unit were justifiable as preemptive self-defense. As for the children, he said they would’ve grown up to become enemies of Germany.
Some of Ohlendorf’s other testimony, according to prosecutor [Benjamin Ferencz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Ferencz):
>He never allowed his men to do as some other units did. He told his men never to use infants for target practice nor smash their heads against a tree. He ordered his men to allow the mother to hold her infant to her breast and to aim for her heart. That would avoid screaming and would allow the shooter to kill both mother and child with one bullet. It saved ammunition. Ohlendorf said he refused to use the gas vans that were assigned to his companies. He found that when the mobile killing vehicles arrived at their destination, where they were supposed to dump their asphyxiated human cargo into a waiting ditch, some of the captives were still alive and had to be unloaded by hand. His troops had to drag out corpses amid vomit and excrement and that was very hard on his men.
Michael Musmanno, the judge presiding over the trial, seemed morbidly fascinated by Ohlendorf’s testimony. He elicited the confirmation that all captured Jews were shot simply because they were Jews.
>Ohlendorf explained, like a school teacher, that those with Gypsy blood were unreliable and might help the enemy and therefore they too had to be killed. When asked by Heath and the Judge why Jewish children were slaughtered, Ohlendorf explained patiently that if the children learned that their parents had been killed, they would grow up to become enemies of Germany. He was interested in long-range security for his country. Hence killing all Jewish men, women, and children was a military necessity. Isn’t that clear?
Ohlendorf was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and membership in a criminal organization, and sentenced to death.
In 1951, most of the remaining 28 death sentences by the U.S. military for Nazi war criminals were commuted by U.S. High Commissioner John McCloy under massive pressure by West German citizens, politicians, and government. All of them were out of prison by end of 1958.
[Context on the commutations](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/wd0ih0/a_crowd_of_about_4000_nazi_sympathizers_some_with/)
However, Ohlendorf and four other men were singled out as the “worst of the worst” and had their death sentences upheld by McCloy. Another two men convicted by the commission in Dachau had their death sentences approved by General Lucius Clay. McCloy and Clay rejected all other appeals for leniency for the condemned men they had refused to spare.
On the night of June 6, 1951, U.S. officials were informed that the final appeal of the condemned men had failed. Ohlendorf, 44, and the others were hanged one by one at Landsberg Prison shortly after midnight. They were the last Nazi war criminals to be executed by the United States.
U.S. officials generally recorded videos and/or took photos of the executions for archiving purposes, and 1951 was not an exception. However, given the political atmosphere, only photos were taken this time, and the faces of the prison officials were censored.
[Ohlendorf standing on the gallows](https://imgur.com/a/pdMma3U)
[Ohlendorf’s body shortly before being placed in a coffin](https://imgur.com/a/ifq6xTi)
Ohlendorf’s body was then handed over to his family for burial. His funeral in Hildesheim attracted large crowds of mourners. Many of them performed Hitler salutes.
On a side note, Benjamin Ferencz is still alive. He is 102 years old, and the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.
And now once again the Crimea has to be liberated from fascists…