Tragedy of the civilian population in the encirclement of the 2nd Shock Army: the experience of pilot work as the evidence of Nazi crimes in the occupied territories

Abstract

The object of this research is the destruction of civilian population that fell into the encirclement of the 2nd Shock Army during the Lyuban offensive operation of aimed at relieving the siege of Leningrad. The relevance of the topic of the tragedy of civilian population is substantiated by the the need to recognize extermination and genocide of USSR population during the Great Patriotic War on the international level, due to initiation by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation of a criminal case on the genocide of USSR population by the Nazi and their accomplices.. This requires the search community to be directly involved and document the results of pilot work and discovered information on the destroyed civilians. The authors indicate insufficient coverage of the tragedy of civilian population in comparison with the study of the fate of army and military personnel. The facts of the genocide of civilians – children, women, and senior population – were established in the course of pilot work. The article describes the experience of finding a previously unknown place of mass shooting of the dwellers of the Village of Vditsko of Novgorod Oblast, during search operations; as well as discloses the information about the factors and circumstances of destruction of the civilians based on pilot work, exhumation, reminiscences of the locals, and archival materials.