Boris Georgievich Mensagin

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Boris Georgievich Menschagin ( Russian Борис Георгиевич Меньшагин * April 26 . Jul / 9. May  1902 greg. In Rostov-on-Don , † 25. May 1984 in Kirovsk ) was a Russian lawyer and officer.

Life

Menshagin attended high school in Smolensk . In 1919 he volunteered for the Red Army . But he left the army in 1927 because he still belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church .

Nevertheless, he was admitted to study law in Moscow . He was a criminal defense attorney during the Stalin purges . At the end of the 1930s he worked as a civil litigation attorney, then in the legal department of the state auto repair shops in Smolensk.

After the occupation of his hometown Smolensk , he was appointed mayor of the German civil administration in September 1941 . 250 Russian employees of the city administration were subordinate to him. According to Russian historians, his relations with the German occupiers were strained. The reason for this was primarily the camp No. 126 for prisoners of war in the city area, as these were inadequately supplied. The number of inmates in the camp who died of starvation or epidemics is estimated at around 60,000. Menschagin successfully campaigned for the reopening of the Smolensk Cathedral and other churches.

In 1943 he joined the Smolensk Committee and with the rank of major of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) of Andrei Vlasov , which was intended for the fight on the German side against the Red Army . Menschagin signed an appeal for Vlasov to overthrow Stalin . After the Wehrmacht withdrew from the Smolensk region, he became mayor of Bobrujsk for a short time .

With his unit, Menschagin and his family reached the Czech Karlovy Vary , which liberated the US Army shortly before the German surrender in May 1945 . The Americans interned him and the other soldiers of the Vlasov Army. During this time, the US units withdrew and, as agreed, left Karlsbad to the Red Army. Menschagin received the - incorrect - message that his wife had been arrested by the Soviet secret police NKGB . In order to spare her interrogation and torture, he surrendered to the Soviet authorities. He was immediately taken to the Lubyanka Secret Service Center in Moscow.

His wife and children managed to escape to Bavaria. They found asylum in the United States .

In a secret trial in Moscow, Menschagin was sentenced to 25 years in prison for collaborating with the German occupiers. He spent 19 years in solitary confinement with no right to visit or correspondence, mostly in the Vladimir prison east of Moscow. After his release, he was given a residence in a remote village in the Arkhangelsk district on the White Sea . There he dictated his memories to a friend on tape, the recordings were smuggled out of the country.

Menschagin died in exile in 1984 . Four years after his death, his memoirs appeared in a Russian émigré publisher in Paris .

Role in the Katyn case

As Mayor of Smolensk, in April 1943, at the head of a large group of locals, Menschagin visited the mass graves in the Katyn forest that had been uncovered on behalf of the Wehrmacht. He gave the German occupiers on record that he had no doubts about the perpetrators of the Soviet NKVD .

Before the Soviet commission to investigate the Katyn massacre, headed by the medical professor Nikolai Burdenko , the astronomy professor Boris Basilewski , who had been appointed by the Germans as deputy mayor of Smolensk , said that Menschagin had told him about an order from Berlin to execute the Polish officers. The NKGB under the direction of Vsevolod Merkulov also forged a diary of Menschagin. It was presented as alleged evidence in January 1944 to journalists from the US and UK.

In the spring of 1946, the NKGB, under Merkulov's leadership, tried to prepare Menschagin with torture and threats as a witness for the Soviet prosecution for the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals . But Menschagin could not be broken. So Basilewski was named again as a witness for Nuremberg. There he repeated the statements he had made before the Burdenko Commission . According to documents in the US National Archives NARA , experts from the US military intelligence service CIC , who conducted surveys on the Katyn massacre in 1948 , suspected , after evaluating Basilewski's statements in Nuremberg, that Menschagin was a fictional personality.

In his posthumous memoirs, Menschagin contradicted Basilewski's remarks on Katyn. Rather, he accused the NKVD of the perpetrator.

Web links

Commons : Boris Menshagin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information on the biography according to the Sakharov Center, Moscow
  2. ↑ Aleksandr A. Kostjučenkov, Burgomistr Smolenska BG Men'šagin. Otraženie političeskich repressij "Katynskogo dela" i nemeckoj okkupacii v sud'be sovetskogo advokata, in: Vestnik Katynskogo Memoriala , 10 (2010), p. 34.
  3. ↑ Aleksandr A. Kostjučenkov, Burgomistr Smolenska BG Men'šagin. Otraženie političeskich repressij "Katynskogo dela" i nemeckoj okkupacii v sud'be sovetskogo advokata, in: Vestnik Katynskogo Memoriala , 10 (2010), p. 40.
  4. ↑ Aleksandr A. Kostjučenkov, Burgomistr Smolenska BG Men'šagin. Otraženie političeskich repressij "Katynskogo dela" i nemeckoj okkupacii v sud'be sovetskogo advokata, in: Vestnik Katynskogo Memoriala , 10 (2010), p. 34.
  5. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre. US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, vol. V, p. 1577.
  6. ↑ Aleksandr A. Kostjučenkov, Burgomistr Smolenska BG Men'šagin. Otraženie političeskich repressij "Katynskogo dela" i nemeckoj okkupacii v sud'be sovetskogo advokata, in: Vestnik Katynskogo Memoriala , 10 (2010), p. 45.
  7. ↑ Dviženie w zaščitu prav čeloveka v Sovetskom Sojuze. Chronika tekuščich del , no.17 , December 30, 1970.
  8. ↑ Boris Men'šagin: Vospominanija: Smolensk… Katyn '… Vladimirskaja tjur'ma. Paris 1988.
  9. ↑ Boris Men'šagin: Vospominanija: Smolensk… Katyn '… Vladimirskaja tjur'ma. Paris 1988, p. 130.
  10. ↑ Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, p. 280.
  11. ↑ Aleksandr A. Kostjučenkov, Burgomistr Smolenska BG Men'šagin. Otraženie političeskich repressij “Katynskogo dela” i nemeckoj okkupacii v sud'be sovetskogo advokata, in: Vestnik Katynskogo Memoriala , 10 (2010), 43–45.
  12. ^ Nuremberg Trial Proceedings. Vol. 17, 168th Day. Ed. Library of Congress. Washington 1947-1949, p. 324-331.
  13. ↑ Summary Report of Investigation Regarding Katyn Forest Murders, Headquarters, Sub-Region Nurnberg, Counter Intelligence Corps Region VI image 7, File unit: Katyn Forest Massacre.
  14. ↑ Boris Men'šagin: Vospominanija: Smolensk… Katyn '… Vladimirskaja tjur'ma. Paris 1988, pp. 142-143.
personal data
SURNAME Menshagin, Boris Georgievich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Меньшагин, Борис Георгиевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian lawyer and officer
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostov on Don
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1984
Place of death Kirovsk