The Koriukivka massacre was a

mass murder Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more pe ...

of 6,700 residentsЮрій Поташній. Корюківка: забута трагедія. Як нацисти знищили 7-тисячне містечко // Історична правда. 2 березня 2011
(in Ukrainian) of

Koriukivka Koriukivka (, ) is a town in Chernihiv Oblast (oblast, province) of Ukraine. It was founded in 1657, over 350 years ago. It is the administrative center of Koriukivka Raion. It hosts the administration of Koriukivka urban hromada, one of the hrom ...

(then a village) in

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

on 1–2 March 1943 by the SS forces of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. 1,290 houses in Koriukivka were burned down and only ten brick buildings and a church survived. The residents of neighboring localities were intimidated and refused to help the Koriukivka residents. On 9 March, the Germans returned to Koriukivka and burned alive some elderly people who had returned to the village after escaping thinking it was safe. According to forensic evidence, the deaths were brought on particularly by shootings from automatic weapons such as

submachine gun A submachine gun (SMG) is a magazine-fed, automatic carbine designed to fire handgun cartridges. The term "submachine gun" was coined by John T. Thompson, the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun, to describe its design concept as an autom ...

s and

light machine gun A light machine gun (LMG) is a light-weight machine gun designed to be operated by a single infantryman, with or without an assistant, as an infantry support weapon. LMGs firing cartridges of the same caliber as the other riflemen of the sam ...

s also blows with blunt objects and burning. Some people were burned alive. The mass murder was committed as a retribution for

Soviet partisan Soviet partisans were members of resistance movements that fought a guerrilla war against Axis forces during World War II in the Soviet Union, the previously Soviet-occupied territories of interwar Poland in 1941–45 and eastern Finland. The ...

activities headed by

Oleksiy Fedorov Oleksiy Fedorovych Fedorov ( uk, Олексій Федорович Федоров, russian: Алексей Фёдорович Фёдоров, ''Aleksey Fyodorovich Fyodorov;'' 30 March 1901 - 9 September 1989), was one of the leaders of Soviet p ...

. Koriukivka was liberated by Soviet troops on 19 March 1943. A report on the number of victims and inflicted damage was compiled in the same year. The Koriukivka massacre became the largest German punitive operation against civilians in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Background

During the German occupation, the village of Koriukivka was a center of

warfare in

Chernihiv Oblast Chernihiv Oblast ( uk, Черні́гівська о́бласть, translit=Chernihivska oblast; also referred to as Chernihivshchyna, uk, Черні́гівщина, translit=Chernihivshchyna) is an oblast (province) of northern Ukraine. T ...

. On the night of 27 February 1943, the partisans of

, having learned that the children of the commanders of a Soviet partisan unit were jailed in the Koriukivka prison, attacked the local Axis garrison, which consisted mostly of Hungarians. During that raid, 78 Axis soldiers were killed and eight captured. Several persons were released from the prison and some buildings were blown up. The partisans had warned the residents of Koriukivka about possible German retribution, but the next day after the partisan raid the way out was blocked. Nonetheless, at least one woman with three children managed to escape from Koriukivka on that day.

The massacre

On the morning of 1 March 1943 an SS unit came to Koriukivka from Shchors. Koriukivka was sealed off. Initially, the Germans tried to huddle all residents in the village's center. When some residents, anticipating the forthcoming killings, had tried to escape, the Germans started to enter all houses, shooting down every occupant. Those who were huddled in the village's centre were shot down in the village's largest buildings, the restaurant and the theater. In the restaurant, about 500 people were killed. Five of them managed to survive. An order to shoot down all Koriukivka residents who had escaped to neighboring settlements was issued. According to historian Dmytro Vedeneyev, the massacre was committed by SS and

collaborationist Wartime collaboration is cooperation with the enemy against one's country of citizenship in wartime, and in the words of historian Gerhard Hirschfeld, "is as old as war and the occupation of foreign territory". The term ''collaborator'' dates to t ...

auxiliary police. The number of perpetrators of the massacre is estimated at 300–500. 5,612 victims of the massacre remain unidentified.

References

{{coord missing, Ukraine 1943 in Ukraine Massacres in 1943 Massacres in Ukraine Nazi war crimes in Ukraine Punitive expeditions March 1943 events Razed cities Massacres committed by Nazi Germany History of Chernihiv Oblast Hungarian war crimes