Feodosia Massacre: Soviet Killing of Nazi German Prisoners in Crimea, 1942

The Feodosia massacre refers to the killing of German prisoners by Soviet forces after the Red Army recaptured the Crimean port city during the Second World War. The violence unfolded in a city already marked by earlier atrocities committed under Nazi occupation.On 3 November the 46th Infantry Division together with the 170 Infantry division captured Feodosia. This mid-sized city on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea had a pre-war population of 28,000. The killings of Jews in the city began on 16 November 1941. On 3 December, Erich von Manstein, the commander of Army Group South, gave the command of the 46th Infantry Division to Generalleutnant Hans Graf von Sponeck. In Feodosia, within the area of Sponeck's command, 1,052 Jews were murdered on or around 10 December 1941 by units of Einsatzgruppe D with the active cooperation and participation of the local military field commander and military police.By 15 December 1941 the Germans murdered the entire Jewish population of Feodosia. According to the documents of Einsatzgruppe D, more than 3,200 Jews in Feodosia were killed, along with hundreds of Crimean Jews, Romani people, and declared or suspected communists. Units of the Wehrmacht and military police assisted in the executions. A witness interviewed by the Soviet Extraordinary Commission in 1944 described how the Jews had been rounded-up and massacred in the city. He said: “All the Jews were gathered. The Germans told them they would be displaced somewhere in Ukraine. On December 4, 1941, in the morning, all the Jews, including my father, my mother and my sister were taken to an anti-tank trench where they were executed by German shooters. 1,500-1,700 people were shot that day.”This episode is part of the series The Forgotten Massacres of Defenseless Soldiers in WWII.Watch the full documentary and explore hundreds of historical films at:WorldHistory.tv